


Somewhere Beyond the Sea

by CommonFig



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Beach Towns, Death but don't worry too much about it, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mystery, Romance, Scifi if you squint really hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-10-29 12:00:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20796290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommonFig/pseuds/CommonFig
Summary: Yuuri arrives at an idyllic beach town to solve the bizarre disappearance of a scandalous doctor. With much persuasion from the chirpy moderator of this detective game, he plays along, but as he gets closer to the truth of the missing doctor, he uncovers several unsettling contradictions about the nature of this town.This is a finished work with 3 chapters and an epilogue. Each chapter will be released in one-week intervals.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey reader,
> 
> Welcome to this fic! In the colder months, I find myself missing the beach, and this is partially inspired by that. I really enjoyed writing this fic, and I can’t believe it’s already done. 
> 
> If you have a low tolerance for death themes, and/or descriptions of poor mental health, I strongly advise you to take caution when reading or to skip over this entirely for your emotional health. This is a blanket trigger warning for the entirety of the fic. 
> 
> But like, really, the majority of this story is more like a mystery. 
> 
> I made a music playlist to go with the story. You can listen to it here: https://bit.ly/2MPnZ2S

Today, the sea is moody. Great, dark waves bellow at the porthole in my room, sending a spray of water which makes me flinch away and stumble backwards onto my small bed. I lay there, listening to the churning water lapping at the side of the ship.

There are no clocks on the ship, but I can tell it is still early in the morning since my stomach doesn’t feel empty yet, that comes later. The ship sways side to side, rocking me like a babe in a cradle. I remove my blue-framed eyeglasses and hold them in my hand. I will only close my eyes for a second, just a small rest to fight off the sleepiness. Only for a second.

**

The small galley is nearly empty when I stop by. It is a compact room with two long wooden tables, shiny from years of use. The ship has a single chef, a skinny man with a comically thin mustache. It seems his lips rarely touch the food he cooks.

I sit down with a bowl of soup to feed my rumbling tummy. Half way through my meal, Seung-Gil, the ship’s navigator walks in, or at least that’s what I saw on his name tag when I passed him in the hall a few days ago. He doesn’t look my way. Instead, he sits in one of the dark corners, out of sight. He doesn’t like me much, judging by the permanent scowl on his face, or maybe that is just his face.

I don’t see anyone on the walk back to my room, just sounds of the creaking boat. In my room, I sit to write in my journal. There isn’t much on this ship, not even a deck of playing cards. I only see suggestions of other people. A sliver of soap in the communal shower stalls, or a fork left on the eating bench. If it weren’t for the tendency for people to forget, I would have thought this boat was a vessel to carry only me through the waves.

When I found the empty journal two nights ago, it was a relief to be rid of my thoughts, because that’s all you can really do here, think.

I have a confession. The journal isn’t _really _empty. A large chunk of the journal was torn out by the previous owner, but now there are a few pages filled with my scratchy handwriting. A teacher from elementary school told me I must improve my penmanship, but I can’t remember whether they were a man or a woman, tall or short, only a vague memory of their admonishment.

I fill one page each day with my observations of the sea (stormy), report anyone I’ve met (no one), and what I ate (soup). I get through half of the page before I run out of things to ideas. I reread my previous entries, all siblings of each other. I wonder why I even bother to report anything; the sea is never anything but angry. 

**

The next day, I explore the top deck. To my disappointment, the air beyond the hatch isn’t much different from the stale air inside the boat. It is just a little colder. It doesn’t even have that salty sea spray, so we must be in a body of fresh water, maybe we are in an ocean. I’ll need to record that in my journal later.

Seung-gil is on deck with a telescope-like device held to his eye. It is pointed to the water. It had been a while since I saw another person aside from the chef.

“What is that?” I ask, pointing to the triangular contraption. I hope the conversation takes, the restlessness is beginning to wear on me. 

“It’s a sextant,” he says without looking away.

“What does it do?” I push the conversation further.

Seung-gil, finally puts down the device. “It’s for navigating.”

“How?”

“A sextant measures the angular distance between two objects using astronomical objects,” he explains. 

I look to where Seung-gil pointed the device. The sky is thick with dense clouds, the kind that sticks to your teeth. In the distance, the line blurs where the sky meets the water. Boundless water. There are no objects in the sky to guide us.

“We’ll reach land by tonight,” he says.

True to his word, we dock at our destination after dinner. I barely commit my last thought into the journal before docking instructions are made over the intercom. I wait in my room for a member of staff to come get me. There is a knock on the door. 

“Where are your things?” Seung-gil asks in his usual flatness. He pushes me aside to peer into my room.

“What things?” I ask, looking back.

“Your valise,” he says, pointing to the bed.

I check under the bed frame to find a small blue suitcase. I didn’t know I even packed one. I click it open to reveal folded up clothes, an empty backpack and boots. I place my journal in the flap, then follow Seung-gil to the common area where I am left with a small group of other passengers. They are of all different ages and shapes, like tourists. Everyone has a bag or a small suitcase with them, all waiting to be let off the ship.

We file out in a single line. It wouldn’t matter if we all rush for the door at the same time, there aren’t enough people to kick up a fuss.

The ship docks on the beach. It isn’t a nice beach like those on the covers of travel magazines, with white and fine sand and clear blue waters. This beach is pebbled with rocks which made my step awkward as I follow everyone to a small clearing, where an old man in a black windbreaker waves to us.

I didn’t realize how cold it is until I notice everyone else in a jacket and rainboots. Water quickly bleeds through my shoes and socks, squishing when I step onto the gravelly sand. I can’t help but feel underdressed.

“Welcome everyone!” says the old man, with a chirpy voice.

That didn’t sound right.

I fix the smudges on my glasses. Turns out the old man has silver hair, not white like I thought. His eyes are the same colour as the ocean— if it were sad. I wonder if he is happy, standing on this beach in this horrible weather. I don’t think I’m happy, but my eyes are brown, so I am at a loss for any poetic descriptions.

“My name is Viktor, and I will be the Moderator for your time here,” he says. “You will each be assigned a mystery to solve and when you solve it, you’ll get a wonderful prize!”

I look around at the people around me who look equally confused. 

Viktor looks at his clipboard, and distributes folders to us. When he gets to me, he holds me in his eyes for a second longer, enough time for me to confirm that he is indeed, not an old man, then I take the folder from his hand.

“Of course, not everyone will solve their assigned mystery, but let’s not focus on that,” he says.

As he walks us away from the beach, he explains that we will all stay in the compound in a dormitory, each with our own room. There must be nine of us in total including myself. The mess hall is in another building, but it isn’t too far.

Viktor takes us to a roundabout paved with stones and bordered by a fence of tall beach grass. He explains that we will meet here for weekly meetings. We sit in benches arranged in a circle. Since there aren’t enough benches for everyone to have their own, Viktor sits next to me. 

“It’ll be great!” Viktor says, explaining the mystery. “Each week, each person will debrief everyone on the progress they’ve made, and we’ll try to help. Tomorrow I’ll take you all into town where you can search for clues.”

After the group disperses from the welcome, I find myself in my assigned room. 

In my room is a twin bed, an armoire, a writing desk with a small blue lamp, and a shelf. A rather large picture of the ocean hangs on the wall over my desk. I walk closer to it, and realize I am wrong. It is the window. The water is grey as ever. I feel around the frame of the window for a dial to decrease the opacity, thumbing it until it is shady, not that it is very bright outside to begin with.

I unpack my belongings into the small wood armoire in my tiny room. Each shirt I take out of my suitcase is unremarkable in every way, completely average. Even the colours are average, in brown and black and grey, like someone mixed all the paint colours together.

My room also comes with its own bathroom. Thank goodness. I don’t think I could be naked in front of other people, not that I’m chubby anymore. The fat kid mindset is hard to outgrow. I inspect my face in the mirror, which has some distortion. I tap on it, and it lacks the crystal-clear _clink _of glass. In other words, it’s plastic, but it does the job. I look tired as any 30-year-old would look. I run my hand through my hair to smooth out the strands sticking out. Normally the gel would fix that, but I’m not working anymore, so I don’t bother with the hair treatment.

The smudge on my glasses is still there, and I take a microfibre cloth from my suitcase, and give it a good rub. The lens is still blurry. In the dimness of the lamp light, I squint and see the several fine scratches on the lens of my glasses. I’ll need to buy a new pair in town tomorrow.

Before bed, I lock my door, but there’s no locking mechanism. I peek my head into the quiet hallway. There is no one in sight, and I hope it stays that way through the night.

I sit on my bed to read over the file. _Aurist Kikuyu_ is printed over the top of the page. An aurist is someone who specializes in ear diseases, so an otologist. It is strange that such an antiquated term is used. I read through his file.

Kikuyu is a single man living on his own. His friends and family describe him as friendly, easy-going, and highly ambitious. He obtained his medical degree at National Medical University, graduating in the top 1% of his class. Now, he owns and operates his own otology clinic in town.

Two weeks ago, his friends and neighbours reported him missing. 

Find out what happened to Kikuyu.

**

The next morning, the sun filters through the window, imparting a watery quality to my room. I let the light pass over my hand to feel its warmth, but I don’t feel anything. I turn up the opacity all the way so more light can pass through, but to no avail. The sun is barely fighting through the clouds.

Viktor takes us to town today. We walk together as a group through the beach and onto a long stretch of boardwalk. I shuffle to the end of the pack, walking leisurely with my file, pen, and notebook in hand. I suppose I should have brought along my backpack. I’ll remember that for tomorrow. 

Tall reeds of grass jut from the craggy rocks of the beach, whispering to each other in the wind coming off the water. A woman plucks up a blade of long thick grass and waves it around, making it dance. She smiles when she notices my gaze on her.

“Hi there,” she says to me. “I’m Yuko.”

Yuko, such a beautiful name. Her eyes are brown, but how are they so shiny and bright?

“I’m Yuuri,” I reply. I shake her outstretched hand, and accept her smile with one of my own. “Have you read your file yet?”

She brushes her hair back behind her tiny ears. “Yes, I have. I’m supposed to find a woman. She went missing a week ago.”

I skim over the file she shows to me. It is similar to mine, except the details are different.

“I hope finding her will be worth the prize,” she says. “What do you think it is? Maybe it’s an exotic trip!” Her eyes light up, and I feel my eyes light up too, even if it is just for a moment.

“Aren’t we already on an exotic trip?” I ask. “We’re on a mysterious island, and the locals are… quirky,” I look to Viktor at the head of the group, talking to a tall woman in a grey coat.

We arrive at a small beach town. Most buildings are long and lean, and painted in pastel colours to compensate for the drizzly weather. In the summer time, I imagine this town would look quite handsome with the glow of the sunset warming the houses, the blue waves lapping at the shore.

“So, if you read your dossier last night, you will know that you will need to find a missing person!” says Viktor. He’s standing in the middle of a plaza and we all crowd around him. “We will return to the compound at 6pm for dinner. Meanwhile, I will be at the café on Main Street from 9 to 10 if anyone needs help.”

We break off into solo expeditions. I look back at Yuko, already walking towards to the nearest building with determination.

I see an eyeglass shop, so I start there.

Chimes tinkle when I open the door. A short man with a white coat comes to greet me. I show him my glasses.

“Oh, no, this won’t do,” he tuts. “I can replace your lens, but are you sure you don’t want to replace your frame as well?” His fingernail digs at the chunky blue frame of my glasses.

I shake my head. “I don’t want them replaced.”

He disappears into the back room, and I freely browse through the store. I try on different frames, each one looks ridiculous on me. I’ve had my blue glasses since college and they saw me through all sorts of disasters. I wouldn’t trade them in for anything.

“Hey, do you know anything about someone named Kikuyu? He’s an Otologist,” I ask. 

“Yea,” he calls from the back room, “he has an office down on Main Street. Nice guy, a bit quiet. He left town, something about a scandal!”

My first clue. I tell him that I will be back.

The clinic on Main Street lacks the charm of the other buildings around it. Old fashioned panel blinds shutter the windows. A _Sorry, We’re Closed _sign hangs on the door. I press my nose to the window, and cup my hands around my eyes to help me see. Just a regular waiting room and a front desk. I go around back to see an equally unremarkable back alley with weeds growing out from the pavement.

I loop back around the front. The clinic is sandwiched between a deli shop and a bookstore. 

I try the bookstore first, but it is locked. Then I walk into the deli.

It is a small Italian deli with sausages hanging from metal bars with twine. The counter is empty, and the smell of warm cooking wafts from the back of the store.

I tap the service bell. “Hello anyone?”

A man with slick black hair ducks out from the beaded curtain of the backroom. He wipes his hands on the greasy apron tied to his waist. “Hello, what can I do for you?” he asks me.

“Hi, I’m looking for someone,” I say. “The doctor next door, when was the last time you saw him?”

The man shrugs, “I can’t remember, but I haven’t seen him around lately.”

“What do you know about him?”

“He came to this island a year ago and opened up a clinic next door. That’s all I know.”

I thank the man and bought a meatball sandwich for lunch. He threw in a free lemon soda to welcome to me to island.

“It’s not often I get to see a new face,” he says. 

I laugh. This really must be an incredibly small town. “There are nine new people here to solve mysteries.” It sounds ridiculous when I say it to him. As expected, he throws his head back in laughter.

“The town’s budget is shrinking like the shore line if they’re importing people to solve mysteries!”

“What was it like before?” I ask.

He traces his hand through his hair, and smiles at the memory. “When my family moved here, we were amazed by the beach, so long and beautiful. I have never seen the ocean until then. There was a bear-shaped rock, which can only be reached at low-tide. My brother and I took turns throwing pebbles at the bear-shaped rock. The first to land 10 pebbles on the back of the bear, wins.” He wipes his hand on his apron again. “I won every time, and that’s why I now own my family’s deli, while my brother is a lawyer in a faraway city.”

He shrugs, a forlorn smile on his face. He invites me to eat lunch with him, sharing the pasta he just made, leaving the sandwich I bought forgotten. I ask him what was in the sauce, but he wouldn’t say anything until after I take the first bite.

“If my Nona ever saw you eating a meatball sandwich, she’d slap you,” he says to me between bites. “There is nothing Italian about it.” When I finish my second helping of pasta, he tells me to wipe up the sauce with my sandwich bread. That was what his Nona reminded him to do everyday, until she passed last spring. Her signature sauce is the one he prepared today. She made it with chicken livers.

He pats me on the back when I leave and tells me to visit him anytime.

I try the bookstore again, it is still deserted.

“Ah, you’re back.” The optician hands me an unfamiliar pair of glasses with an elegant black frame.

I hand them back. “These aren’t my glasses.”

He pushes the glasses back to me and gives me a small brown paper bag. I open it and examine the pieces in the light. They’re a bit blurry without my glasses, but I know the item in my hand by touch. I am holding the fragmented remains of my old blue frames.

“I accidentally cracked them,” the optician says briskly. “I won’t charge you for the new pair."

I put on the black framed glasses. The optician holds up a mirror for me to see. I look like a totally different person. Inexplicably, they make me look more my age. 

“Sometimes, it’s good to see things through a new frame,” he offers apologetically, like he can hear the uneasy feeling in my belly. I look so strange, but I don’t hate it.

“Actually, can you tell me what else you know about Kikuyu? If you do, I might be able to forgive you,” I playfully ask.

The optician smiles in good humour. “Well, like I said, scandal. I’m not one for gossip, but you’re busting my chops, kid. I think Kikuyu got his secretary pregnant and skipped town. After that, he never showed up in town again. The secretary locked up the clinic real tight, looking heavier since the last time anyone saw her. Not that the doctor was missed or anything. Not much use for an ear doctor around here.”

**

“Did you find anything?” asks Yuko on the walk back to the compound. The sky is a darker grey compared to this morning.

“My missing person got his secretary pregnant and skipped town,” I say. “I’m ready to collect my prize.”

She laughs. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

We walk along the boardwalk. Everyone seems to have made a friend in the group, and they talk about the events of the day.

“I went to a nice Italian deli on the main stretch facing the ocean.” I give her my can of lemon soda. It has pictures of lemons drenched in water on the backdrop of a blue sky full of white clouds.

She holds the can up to her face to examine it more closely, “the art is so pretty,” she says. “I think I might just keep it instead of drinking it.” Yuko smiles at me and my heart skips a beat.

“I didn’t get far on my case,” she says. “I asked around, but no one has even heard about my person.”

“Maybe I can help you with your case tomorrow!” I say, making an excuse to spend more time with her. Anything to make her smile at me again. “I still need to ask around for Kikuyu, so I might as well ask for your person as well.”

“You don’t have to,” she pauses to look into the tall grass, “but thank you.”

**

For the next days, Yuko and I go around town to search for her person, a housewife named Clementine.

We start at the southern tip of the town near the ocean and make our way up towards the north. The northern-most tip of the town is capped by a red lighthouse, sitting on the cliff covered in a thick forest. The town is small, but going door to door to ask is still a daunting task. Like most small towns, everyone knows each other, which meant we are regarded as strangers to them.

Most houses didn’t have a response, but sometimes, I feel unseen eyes on us through the gauzy curtains of the windows. The few who opened up had never heard of Clementine, but they did hear of Kikuyu.

They all parrot back to me some version of what the optician told me. _He skipped town after getting the receptionist pregnant._ _I saw the receptionist around town, her belly was as round as a watermelon. _

I can’t tell if they actually expect me to believe this. Kikuyu has only been gone for two weeks. There’s no way the receptionist could look anything but still trim. 

It is already later in the day and we didn’t even cover a sixth of the town. We wait outside the only grocery store, watching the bellies of all the women passing through its doors. The secretary will eventually need to stop for groceries...right? I hold up the simple sign Yuko made, _Have you seen Clementine? _We continue like this for most of the afternoon until the manager comes outside with a stern look on his face.

“I’ll need to ask you to leave,” he says, peering down at us through his half-lune glasses. “You’re scaring away our customers, especially you.” He looks it me. “You’re tempting the women. You think you’re a total stud, don’t you?”

I was doing nothing of the sort. Perhaps my new glasses make me look completely different. I adjust my glasses to give him a retort, but I am interrupted when a woman walks up to us.

“I know Clementine,” she says.

The woman is dressed in a pale pink coat and a sunny yellow hat. “She is my neighbour, but she’s gone now.”

Yuko and I follow the woman around the store as she shopped for her groceries. She reveals nothing much about Clementine, almost speaking exclusively about herself. She continues to eye me as I trail behind her and Yuko. When we leave the store, it is raining.

“We can talk more about this at my home,” the woman says to Yuko. She points to one of the smaller houses at the top of the hill next to the lighthouse. “But I think your friend should stay behind,” she says, jutting her thumb at me like a lame donkey who won’t make it through the night.

Yuko looks to me and takes me aside.

“I’m unsure if the trip will be worth it just to hear another earful of this lady talk about herself,” she whispers to me in mild annoyance.

I watch the woman readjust her sun hat. “She’s your only lead,” I tell her. “You should follow her.”

I wave goodbye to Yuko from under the small canopy of the grocery store. It is almost time to return to the compound and I walk to the meeting place under a fine mist of rain.

Everyone paired up with their friend and I am left alone without Yuko.

“Where’s Yuko?” Viktor asks me. He extends his umbrella to me, so we are both shielded from the rain. It feels oddly claustrophobic under an umbrella with another person. I think the last time I shared an umbrella was when I was in grade school, but I do hate being caught in the rain. 

“She’s investigating a lead. She won’t be back to tonight.”

Viktor nods in understanding, then we walk together in silence. The slippery material of our windbreakers rub together from time to time, and Viktor just smiles at the zippy sound it makes when it happens. I offer to hold the umbrella, but he insists on holding it up.

“Are you ready for the week review tomorrow?” he asks.

“Yes, I am,” I say. “I think I know why my person is missing.”

His eyebrows raise in disbelief, “wow, that was fast. We’ll see how you do tomorrow.”

We continue in silence again, then he speaks, looking directly into my eyes. 

“Did you get new glasses?”

I suddenly feel the new weight of the frames on my face. “Yea, I did.”

“They look nice on you,” he says. “A refreshing change.”

**

I wake up to the grey ocean sucking at the large jagged stones of the beach. In the distance, I see a stone in the rough shape of a bear. I turn the opacity of the window to full to see it better, expecting the sky to grow brighter, but it doesn’t.

At breakfast, I see Yuko already with a plate of food. She’s struggling to cut the crust of the quiche with her plastic knife. I wave to her, but she doesn’t see me. I get a small round butter cookie to serve with my black tea and cuts of browning banana and apple.

I place my breakfast beside her and that seems to jolt her out of her thoughts. She looks up and gives me a tired smile.

“When did you get back last night?” I ask her.

She is still trying to cut out a mouthful of quiche with her dull knife. “Maybe four in the morning. I had to walk all the way back.”

“She talked that much?” I skewer a piece of apple with the plastic fork with much difficulty. 

“Yea, she did. Her name is Grace by the way. Ironic, isn't it?" she laughs, half way between a friendly chuckle and a scoff. "After you left, she stopped talking about herself and told me everything she knew about Clementine,” she glances at me. “I think she is just a bit old fashioned, we talked about a lot of ‘women things.’ ”

I feel her eyes on my face, and she giggles at my cheeks blooming scarlet.

“It’s alright,” she tells me, still giggling.

We finish breakfast and gather at the paved roundabout cropped with tall grass. It is warmer today, and I even see pieces of blue through the grey clouds. I take off my jacket and fold it on my lap.

Yuko sits next to me and she teaches me how to use a blade of grass as a reed. She presses the blade between her thumbs and cups her fingers together. A sound like a kazoo comes out. I try, but I can’t make a sound.

She unfolds my hands and arranges them in the right way, then tells me to blow. Determined to make this work, I take in a deep breath and blow with all my might into the reed, startling even myself when a loud noise erupts from my hands. We laugh together.

More people arrive at the roundabout until everyone is present. Today, Viktor is in a black wool coat and has a clipboard on his lap. Its pages flapping in the wind.

“Hi everyone,” he says, with his usual chipper. “I hope you had a wonderful first week here on this island. At the end of every seven days, we will do a review. You will have the opportunity to share with everyone what progress you’ve made on your mystery. If you think you solved it, give me a heads up before you begin your update.” He looks to the tall woman sitting beside him and asks her to start.

She is wearing a trench coat and leather gloves. She takes out a notebook from her leather handbag and opens it to a page.

“Hi, my name is Alex,” she says. “I’m investigating a man called Jesse. So far, all I know is that he graduated from the local high school and went off to university in another city. He returned to this town for summer vacation and then vanished. I got in contact with his family, and they said that he was a strange one, that he was more delicate than most people, and always stayed in his room. His sister told me that she felt he had a lot of hidden secrets. I tried to push for more information, but then his family told me I over stayed my welcome.”

Alex flips the page and continues. “I then went to the local high school to check the yearbooks for friends of Jesse, because you know how kids are. They tell their friends everything and their parents don’t even know their favourite colour. So, I found a picture of him with a few of his friends. I made a few calls off the phone numbers the school gave me, but their families said that they were off at university and that I shouldn’t distract them from their studies. I did find one person who was available. She stayed behind at the local college and we’re meeting later today.” Alex looks at Viktor, who is taking notes on his clipboard. “That’s the end of my update,” then she closes her book.

After Viktor finished his notes, he asks if anyone had any knowledge or help they could offer Alex. A few people wish her good luck.

We pass through the circle of people in the same way. It is apparent that all of us are investigating people missing in the town. Everyone already had leads for them to follow, and I begin to doubt that I have come to the correct conclusion for my own mysterious Aurist Kikuyu. It wasn’t that I didn’t try, I did, but I am tired of hearing the same old story. _He knocked up his secretary and skipped town. _There isn’t much mystery, just an irresponsible guy who can’t keep his hands to himself.

Yuko is next to present her findings. “My name is Yuko, and I am looking for Clementine. I found her childhood friend and she told me that Clementine was born in the mountains and moved to the beach town to work at a preschool. It was the only job she could find since people from the mountains don’t really have formal educations. She met her husband in town a few months after the move.”

“He was a carpenter and he offered to build them a house in town, closer to the preschool, so that she didn’t need to trek down the mountain everyday. Also, if they planned to have a family, it would be easier on their kids.” She stops. “I still don’t know why she’s missing. That was all her friend told me for now, I’m meeting with her again to hear the rest of the story.”

Viktor opens the floor for anyone who has any insight for Yuko, but no one had anything to say. Then he looks at me.

I feel wildly unprepared.

“My name is Yuuri, and I am looking into someone named Kikuyu. I thought I figured out why he was missing, but I think I might be wrong.” I look at Viktor.

“Come tell me the solution,” he says, gesturing me to his side.

I get up to whisper into his ear, and he looks back at me with a face that says that I am definitely wrong.

“Yuuri, you can tell everyone your solution if you want, maybe you can get some help from people.”

I explain my misguided conclusion to everyone, and I feel my cheeks growing warmer at how absurd it sounds. “I asked around town about Kikuyu—who is an ear doctor. I showed up outside his clinic in town and no one was there. Apparently, he got his secretary pregnant, and I thought that was the reason he left town.”

I look around the circle, and everyone seems indifferent to my story, except for Viktor and Yuko. Viktor asks if anyone has any insight to offer.

Alex clears her voice, and speaks up. “Maybe the secretary knows where he is? If you find her, you might find him. Since being a secretary is an entry level job that doesn’t require much previous experience, it seems like she could be one of the mountain folks? Perhaps she fled back to the mountains when the rumours broke out.”

A few more people share their investigation. Everyone has made more progress than me. I feel more inadequate each time someone plans to meet up with a lead, or finds even a scrap of promising evidence.

Viktor dismisses us for lunch when we are done. I feel a wave of relief when I am free to leave. The sun is supposed to be the strongest midday, but even now, it struggles to break through the seemingly impenetrable cloud cover, and it simply glowed dimly in the sky over us.

“Yuuri.”

Viktor takes me aside while everyone leaves the secluded circle. He doesn’t have his smile on, and I have a vague feeling that it isn’t small talk. “Can you meet me in this roundabout after lunch? I want to talk to you about your progress.”

I nod, then I leave to join the others in the mess hall. Yuko isn’t there, she must have rushed off to meet Grace. I hope Grace will serve her better food than whatever they serve here.

I eat by myself at a table until Alex sits next to me.

“Got his secretary pregnant, huh?” she comments. She picks up a cracker with a perfectly manicured nail and dips it into her tomato soup.

I shrug, “it’s the only thing people know about Kikuyu.”

“Okay, well, I had another thought about your case. From the looks of it, this town only has that dinky community college, which is not exactly pumping out medical degrees on a conveyer belt. Since your guy is a doctor and not known in town aside from the rumour, maybe he was from somewhere else, and then moved here?”

I vaguely remember that detail from his description. “That would only make it harder for me to find out what happened to him.”

“Well, you can call up his colleagues back home to see why he fled to some middle-of-nowhere town. Maybe you can spot a pattern since your guy has already fled town twice. Once from where he was previously, and another time after the scandal.”

I ponder her suggestion, which seems completely reasonable, but difficult to implement.

She takes a sip of her soup. I take a bite out of my tuna sandwich. Her eyes shift playfully around the room before she leans in, “so what do you think of Viktor?” she asks. Her voice is sly.

“He’s doing his job, isn’t he?”

“No, what do you think of him? Like do you like him?” 

“Yea, I like him fine,” I tell her.

“Really?”

“Should I not?”

She shakes her head slowly, like she knows something I don’t—which is probably true. “He has been my, walking buddy, and although he talks to me and acts like a good Moderator, I see him checking you out from the corner of his eye. I bet it drives him crazy that you’re so close to Yuko.”

I laugh. “At the rate that I am progressing through my mystery, he’s probably just concerned that I might trip over my own two feet.”

“No, I’m serious! It’s a woman’s intuition. I just know,” she insists. “After all, I was the one who told him that I was okay with walking by myself so he can offer you his umbrella. I had my own. I’ve never seen anyone take off so fast.”

I meet Viktor in the roundabout. It is now windier, and the grass sways around us, muffling our voices to anyone outside the circle.

“So what exactly is the consequence if I don’t make progress?” I ask.

“Well, we can’t really punish you,” Viktor says. “We can only encourage you to finish. All the mysteries are solvable with the clues scattered throughout the town. You just need to put in the effort to find them, so you can cross the finish line.”

“So technically, if I don’t solve the mystery, I can live on this island forever, rent free and all expenses paid?” I ask.

There was a glimmer in his eye. If I blinked, I would have missed it.

“Um, no. You can’t stay here forever. There is a time limit and consequence, but it’s too early to talk about that,” says Viktor. He combs his hair out of his face with his fingers, but the wind just blows it back. “So, to help you progress, I’ll step down as a Moderator for only a day, and help you get the ball rolling.”

**

The next morning, I wake up and get dressed. Outside the compound, I empty the surprising amount of sand that collected in my boots in the days that have passed. I meet Viktor at the roundabout and he is dressed in a lightweight puffer jacket and a backpack.

Everyone walks to the town. Yuko is not here today, so she must have stayed over at Grace’s home for the night. Alex and Viktor walk together, and they invite me to join them, but I decline and I walk alone, taking in the views of the day.

The group breaks away when we get to the town, leaving only Viktor and I.

“So what should we do today?” he asks me.

“Let’s go to the north part of town near the mountains,” I say. “Alex suggested I look for the secretary up there.”

We trek towards the direction of the lighthouse at the top of the cliff, walking through streets lined with pastel houses, and quaint shops. For a beach town, it is awfully empty, but it is late fall. No tourist would be interested in taking a swim in freezing waters, and their beaches aren’t exactly nice.

I ask Viktor about his role as a Moderator. He tells me that one of his duties is to make sure everyone progresses at a good rate. In a typical day, he walks us to the town, then sits at a café for an hour to eat breakfast, returns to an office in town to do paperwork and other things until he has to take us back to the compound again. He tells me that the communal walks and meals help build structure into our lives.

“Do you like your job?” I ask him.

“Yes, I do,” he says, smiling at me. “I get to help all sorts of people, and I can spend my time in this beautiful coastal town.”

“I would hardly call this town beautiful. Since I got here, I haven’t even seen the sun once.”

He chuckles, “I grew up in a city called St. Petersburg, where it’s overcast all the time, so this reminds me of home. It has seagulls and beaches, but there, you can’t swim in the water. It’s too dangerous with the pollution.”

The name of the city sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it in my head.

“This town is much better, everything is cleaner, and there’s virtually no smog,” he takes a deep breath in. “I love it.”

We arrive at the foot of the mountain. On one side, there is a sharp cliff. I notice a marked difference in the homes sitting near the top of the hill compared to the beach houses. They are not pastel at all, rather they are built of hardier materials. 

A large field of fluffy reeds poking out of a spongy marsh stretch out before us, snaking into the distance until it disappears into the forest which curls up the cliff like a lion’s mane. We follow a narrow, wooden walkway consisting of only planks. It is covered in mud and barely keeps our boots above the marsh. Pools of water collected in patches across the field, reflecting the sky like a shattered mirror. Even in the pitch of fall, purple wild flowers bloom along the path.

My stomach begins to ache, and I forgot to bring snacks. I didn't even eat breakfast because I knew Yuko wouldn’t be at the mess hall, so I don’t bother showing up. Somehow it doesn’t occur to me that I should eat because I might get hungry.

“We can’t stop to eat here,” says Viktor, hearing my hunger. “It’s all marsh land, and we’ll ruin our pants if we sit on anything. We can eat once we make it to the forest.”

I don’t tell him that I didn’t pack anything to eat, for I only brought my journal, a pen, two pairs of socks, and the dossier. I move one foot in front of the other, trying to ignore the gnawing feeling in my stomach, but then a piece of rotted wood gives away under the weight of my step.

I wave my arms wildly, to help keep my balance. Two strong arms hook me from behind until I’m on proper footing again. I look behind me to see Viktor holding me up. His boots are in the marsh, but he doesn’t seem to mind that his feet are now soaked.

I give him a hand out of the water, his boots make a sucking sound when they dislodge from the mud. I stammer out an apology, but he doesn’t take it. He says it’s all right, and that’s what Moderators are supposed to do, promote the wellbeing of their participants.

I don’t remind him that he’s taking a day off from being the Moderator.

It isn’t long before the marshy land solidified into ground again. My steps on the wooden planks feel more certain and we are able to quickly walk the remaining distance to the forest. We find a nearby creek which feeds into the marsh and Viktor rinses out the mud and dirt pooled in his boot, then he peels off his wet socks and rinses them. Brown liquid seeps from the folds when he wrings them out.

“Why aren’t you eating?” he asks me while he drapes his socks on a nearby branch.

“I forgot to pack food,” I say, looking away. I’m a 30-year-old man, and I can’t even remember to pack lunch. He must think I’m so irresponsible.

“Oh, we can share whatever I packed,” he says, like it’s not a big deal at all. He rinses his hands in the creek, walks to his pack barefoot, and takes out a sandwich filled thickly with meat and cheeses, a bag of almonds, and a fruit leather. The sandwich is already cut diagonally and he passes me the other half. 

I accept his food with a _thank you_ squeaked from my lips and I give him a pair of socks from my pack.

“Wow, of all the things to pack, you pack socks,” he says, perplexed, but he takes the socks anyway.

“The water always bled through my sneakers, then it occurred to me I should wear boots,” I say. “They’re waterproof, but sometimes they make my feet sweat.” I regret telling him the last part about my sweaty feet, and he laughs in amusement, which brings a chuckle out of me.

We eat together near the mouth of the forest. He passes me his water bottle and tells me to drink up while I can. After taking a large gulp, I pass it back to him and he drinks the remaining liquid, then he fills it up with water from the creek and drops a tab of something into the bottle to make it safe for drinking.

Tall lengths of trees spire into the sky, and I remember my place in the world. Fall has already touched the crowns of the trees, allowing some sunshine to filter through the branches. I feel the light kiss my face, but it doesn’t carry any warmth.

We hike through the forest. The air feels fresher in the lungs of the earth. Viktor catches me watching him and smiles. I smile back. 

I see a thin line of smoke in the distance, and as we draw closer, I see that it flows from a tall chimney stack on top of a house. The house is one of many in the surrounding area, all built into the cliff of the mountain with materials like stone, wood, and many panes of glass.

After trekking the rest of the way up, Viktor knocks on the door of the house with the tall chimney. I hear shuffling inside, then in the lookout window, a man eyes us up and down before he opens the door.

“Who are you?” he says. He looks like the textbook definition of a lumberjack. Burly, beardy, and rough.

“Hi, my name is Yuuri, and this is Viktor. I’m looking for a woman, and she’s rumoured to be pregnant with the child of the ear doctor in town. Have you heard of her?”

The man slumps, and passes his hand over his face. “You’re looking for Briar,” he says. “Just give me a moment.” He disappears from view and puts down something heavy. The door slowly inches back while he pulls on his coat and boots, revealing a hunting rifle leaning against the wall. He tells us to follow him, and leads us on a path up the forest. We walk over tree roots as thick as stumps.

“Do you know Briar well?” I ask.

He grunts.

“Are you aware of the rumours about her?” I try again.

He nods his head.

As we venture deeper into the forest, the sun grows weaker and dimmer. Hanging lanterns spaced between cabins light the way.

We stop outside a cabin much like the man’s. He tosses out a sarcastic _good luck, _and walks back down the slope of the mountain. I see a shadow move around in the cabin. I knock on the door.

I try again, but they don’t answer.

“What should I do now?” I ask Viktor.

He walks around the back of the house, and I follow him. There is a scrappy pile of firewood stacked against the side of the house and an axe wedged in an old tree stump. The back of the cabin has a porch and a sliding door which looked into the living room. A woman reclines in an arm chair, watching TV with a bowl of popcorn in her lap.

Viktor walks toward to the window. I grab his arm to stop him from revealing our presence. He turns to me and pats my hand in reassurance before he knocks on the glass, causing the woman to spray popcorn all over the room. She gets up and whips the curtains closed.

“Briar, we would like to talk to you!” calls Viktor in a sing-song voice, knocking on the window again. “Briar?”

“Viktor, we should leave her alone,” I tug on his sleeve. “She clearly doesn’t want to talk to us.”

“But you finally found a lead. We should at least try harder,” he says to me. He checks his watch. “Plus, we need to wrap things up by 7 tonight, or else we will miss the last shuttle down the mountain. It’s already 3.”

We wait outside Briar’s cabin, occasionally knocking on her door, hoping to see someone pass by. There are plenty of birds flitting around, but no people. I branch out and try knocking on the doors of her neighbours, but the lights aren’t on and no one seems to be home… all except for one. I knock and hope for the best. 

Somewhere else in the forest, I hear Victor knock on someone’s door.

The door in front of me opens to reveal a tiny granny, barely tall enough to grasp at the door knob. She takes a step outside, looking in the direction of Viktor’s voice. “You boys are putting up quite a racket,” she says.

“Uhm, yes,” I say, “sorry.”

She smiles up at me. “And what can I do for you, young man?”

I laugh a little. I haven’t been called a young man in ages. “The local ear doctor is missing and I think your neighbour, Briar can help us find him, but she won’t talk to me. I really need to find the ear doctor because, um, I have a really bad ear infection. It hurts. A lot.” I cup my hand against my ear and wince, hoping to look convincing.

She chortles, “oh, Briar has been holed up in that cabin since the day the doctor skipped town. No one really knows if she’s actually pregnant. She was always one to tell tall tales. If there’s anyone who can get her out, it’s Scott.”

“Um, where’s Scott?” I ask.

“He lives at the very bottom of the cabins.”

“Does he look like a lumberjack? Tall, has a beard, looks like he could kill a bear with his barehands?”

“That’s the one!” she says.

“You see, my friend and I already met him earlier today. He didn’t really seem to want to help us, is there any other way to get Briar to talk to us--”

“Nonsense!” she yells. “He’s just being crummy. I thought I taught him better than that.” She puts a finger to her lips, deep in thought. “How about this, you and your friend help a frail old woman hack up the old fallen tree in the back and I’ll pull in some favours from Scott. He owes me at least ten. Do we have a deal?” She holds out her little hand to me. It looks as if it might snap off if the wind blew any harder. 

I doubt whether she can really strongarm a man like Scott into doing anything.

“Don’t doubt me, boy,” she says, and for a moment I feel compelled to obey.

I shake her hand. “Deal.”

I call Viktor over, and the granny shows us to the fallen tree and a communal shed full of carpentry tools. A row of axes hang on the wall, but before we touch anything, she asks to see our hands. She holds both of my hands in her small dry palms and inspects them like she would a fish at a market. Then she holds Viktor’s. “Such delicate and unmarred fingers. You’re both not from around here, are you? Not even from the beach town.” She tosses work gloves at us.

We get to work on the tree, hacking it rhythmically until pieces of it give away, whittling it into kindle. I quickly heat up and take off my coat, then my sweater, until I am in my undershirt, soaked with sweat. Two-thirds of the way through, I am out of breath and I sit down to rest while Viktor keeps going, like he isn’t affected by the labour. Each swing of his axe comes down confident and sure, splitting the wood in half.

The sun sets behind the horizon. I couldn’t see it, but I can feel the sudden chill in the air. I take off my gloves to inspect the sore blisters blooming on my palm. I check the time, and it looks like we have already missed the last tram. I take a sip of water from the pitcher the granny brought out to us.

“Do you work out?” I ask Viktor.

He swings, and snaps another block in half. “Yea, I do,” he smiles at me. 

I put on my gloves and pick up my axe again.

We finish the job some time later that night. The granny invites us in for dinner and we scarf it down with voracious appetite. She tells us she can set us up at Scott’s place because he is a bachelor, and she is a married woman despite the passing of her husband 8 years ago. She wears her wedding ring proudly on her finger.

We trek downwards to Scott’s cabin. I offer to help her down the tangle of roots, but she is surprisingly nimble and deft.

“You again,” he says to us through a crack in the door. “I can’t help you.”

The granny pushes us aside, “Yes, you will.”

His eyes widen, and he swings open the door, “Ah, oh, Mrs. Mathilda, good evening ma’am.”

“These boys chopped the wood that you promised to do last month, and now it’s almost winter. Do you expect me to freeze to death?”

“No, ma’am! Absolutely not!” he sputters.

She sneers, “I thought so. To make it up to me, I want you to put these boys up with you for the night. They were busy working and missed the tram down the mountain. Then in the morning, help them get Briar out of her cabin.”

“I can’t possibly get her out of the cabin,” he says. “No one can, and believe me. I’ve tried.”

“Balderdash, there’s no pity in my forest. I’ll help you root her out tomorrow morning. It’s for your sake and her sake. Now be good to them and show them how you were raised,” she says.

Scott lets us into his warm cabin and tells us he will be back after accompanying Mrs. Mathilda back to her home, then we are left alone.

The cabin is generous for a single person. The furniture is clearly well made by a craftsman. I recline into the sofa, taking the weight off my aching muscles. “I can’t wait to take a shower,” I grumble. “I feel disgusting.”

Viktor sets his pack down, and sits next to me. We enjoy the warm crackle of the fire together.

When Scott returns, he shows us around the cabin. He rolls out some spare blankets. One of us can sleep on the couch, and the other can sleep on the pile of blankets on the floor. I notice that there’s no bathroom in the house.

“It’s outside,” he says, pointing to the window, “there’s a hose you can use in the back. Cold showers build your immune system. You can’t really afford to get sick in the forest. There are some nasty bugs you can catch up here.”

I offer to go first. I look around the forest to make sure no one is out there while I am naked, and I angle myself away from the windows, so Scott and Viktor won’t see me. The hose has one temperature: freezing. I wash the blood from my blisters, then douse the water all over my body and hair, rubbing at my skin until my fingers numb. 

I pull on my sweater and pants and I wash my sweaty undershirt and socks in a dusty pail filled with water, all while my body shivers in the icy wind. I return to the cabin, my hair still dripping with freezing water. I rush to the fire, holding my hands as close to it as I can without being burned.

Viktor throws something soft at me. It is a towel, and I quickly wrap it around myself to keep warm.

“Th-th-thanks,” I force out through chattering teeth.

“Don’t thank me. Scott thought we can use the extra towel,” he says as he leaves for his turn with the hose.

I find my coat and I wrap it around me to fend off the chill. I sit in front of the fire, which may as well be there for decoration since I can’t seem to warm up. I tuck my toes under my bum, and press my fingers under my arms, but nothing seems to help. 

Viktor returns from outside completely dressed. Aside from the cold biting his cheeks and nose, he seems fine. He sits next to me by the fire. “Still cold?” he asks. He touches his palm to my forehead and it feels deliciously warm.

“Your hair is still wet,” he says. He wraps his towel around my head and dries my hair. I sit there like a rock, still shivering and hoping that one day, I can feel my toes again. He runs his fingers through my hair a couple times. He retrieves another dry towel, and sits closer before he is tangling the towel in my hair again. When he is done, he slicks my messy hair back, and sits there, staring at me for a moment, just the crack of the fire between us.

I can’t read the expression on his face, but it is one that I have never seen him wear before, and it makes me want him to do something to me. Push me, scratch me, slap me, touch me, kiss me. I’ll accept anything. Anything-- except what he is doing now, watching me with that sort of face and not doing anything about it. It makes me anxious and restless. 

I realize I stopped shivering when my cheeks burn up. I get up and stretch out on the makeshift mattress of blankets on the floor, anything to get away from that look.

He gets up and sits next to me on the blankets. His hand settles dangerously close to mine. I move over so he can sit more comfortably, because he sits too close to where I sit. I’m not sure what he wants from me. I observe him, leaning closer to me. He has that look in his eyes again. His hand reaches up to the side of my face, warm as I remembered it, and the tip of his thumb ghosts over the bottom bud of my lips. 

Scott slams open the front door, startling us apart. He vigorously towels his freshly hosed hair. “…goddamn freezing out there,” he mutters to himself, without sparing us a look, then shuts the door to his room. 

He emerges a moment later in pajamas with an armful of blankets and socks. “It gets pretty cold out here.” He tosses a pair of socks to me. “It’s a bit big, but better than nothing.”

I unroll them over my bare feet, and they’re comically large. Scott lets out a reluctant chuckle and shrugs. 

We fall into an easy chat, speculating how Mrs. Mathilda will coax Briar out of her cabin. Scott jokingly suggests that Mrs. Mathilda will flood the house with the hose or cut the electricity so she can’t watch television. 

I let out a yawn, and we call it a night. Viktor tucks himself into a blanket and wishes me goodnight. I turn off the lamp and fall asleep to the sound of the fire burning.

**

Viktor stands by the large windows looking out into the forest. His shadow is long and lean under the full moon, unblemished by clouds in the sky.

There is a chill in the room. The fire died out.

I walk up to him and place a hand on his shoulder. He turns to me and watches me with the same expression he wore this evening. In the blue moonlight, he looks ethereal, barely tethered to this world.

He smiles kindly, leaning close to me until I can feel the flutter of his eyelashes on my face. My instinct tells me to push him away, but I stand there. His warm breath opens me up and slips between my lips. I let him into me.

He quiets all my doubts about him. He plants gentle reminders down my neck, touching me tender and hard until my skin bloomed with the memory of him. I can only hear moaning. I try to keep my voice down to not wake Scott sleeping in the other room.

He licks into my mouth, and I give him what he wants. I give him a reason to stay grounded, to stay here, with me. But when I reach into myself, I can’t find anything. No memories, aside from a name and a face. How am I supposed to ground him when I am nothing?

I break away from him.

“Who am I?” I ask.

He looks so sad, but he cups my face in his hands, and kisses me again. I hate that he’s placating me, distracting me, stalling for time until I wake. And he lets me go, as if burned by my thoughts.

“I’m not supposed to be here, am I?” I ask him. The moon looks wrong, painting Viktor like a stranger in the stark light. 

He tries to kiss me again, but my instinct does not let me down twice.

**

The hose is better in the morning under the clouded sun. The cold water helps loosen the knots in my back from sleeping on the floor, and mellows the burning I feel on my skin. The blankets helped, but not by much. Viktor applies ointment on my open blisters, and wraps them in gauze. I tell him to not bandage them too tightly or else they won’t heal properly. I don’t know why I tell him that, but he wraps my hand perfectly.

“You’re very warm,” he says to me. “Are you sick?” He puts his hand to my forehead, and it stays there for a moment. “I should’ve given you this ointment yesterday,” he sighs. “And bacteria from the hose water could’ve entered through your wound or mucous membranes…”

I tell him that it’s okay, that I feel fine, but I know that the soreness is not from sleeping on the lumpy mattress. I feel weak and tired. I could easily sleep for another day. He makes me take a painkiller from his first-aid kit to keep the fever down.

Scott cooks us a modest breakfast of baked beans and eggs over porridge. I try to receive his hospitality, but my appetite deserts me. Viktor encourages me to eat as much as I can. I manage to finish half of it. Then we leave to collect Mrs. Mathilda before we approach Briar’s house.

“Briar, it’s me,” says Scott. “Open up. Please.”

We wait outside her porch, but we hear nothing. In the window, I see my reflection. I don’t see any marks on my neck from yesterday night, and I feel my face burning up at the memory.

Mrs. Mathilda, takes a key from her pocket, and turns it in the keyhole. She opens the door and lets us all inside. I wish she told us she had a key all along. 

“Briar, sweetie,” she says. “It’s time to leave your wallowing. Your doctor has vanished and these boys would like to find him because one of them has an ear infection.”

Viktor glances at me, and I smile sheepishly.

We find her in her room, curled under her blanket. Scott pulls them off, but she doesn’t give them up without a fight.

“He’s not my doctor!” she spits out. “Not anymore.” Her hands come up to cover her face, and she weeps into them.

Mrs. Mathilda, sits on the edge of the bed and lets Briar cry on her tiny shoulder, she smooths out the fuzzy bird’s nest that is her hair. Briar’s body is slightly plump and wrapped in a billowy dressing gown, hiding any indications of a pregnancy.

Scott takes us downstairs to give them some privacy.

We sit in the living room. There are still pieces of popcorn left scattered around, and Scott picks them off the floor. Feeling partially responsible, Viktor and I help him clean up the mess.

“Briar and I, we used to date,” says Scott. “She always had big dreams to leave this town, but I wanted to stay. Mrs. Mathilda doesn’t look it to you folks, but she’s changed after her husband died, lonelier, sadder. She knows she doesn’t have many years left, and I want to be there for her when she leaves.”

“Why is Briar still in the mountains when she works in town at the clinic?” I ask.

“Well, she came back. She did leave for the town a year ago, even found job and everything. Moved down there too, since the tram only goes down, and not up. She can’t be trekking up the mountain every evening after work. She worked at the front desk at the new hearing clinic.” He strokes his beard, “I couldn’t stop her from leaving. Can’t blame her either for wanting something bigger than this crummy old town.” 

“So what do you know about the hearing clinic?” I ask.

“Oh, the town was in a buzz when we heard we were getting a new clinic, because there are a lot of old people here. All the younger folks moved out to bigger, better cities,” he says. “The doctor, he’s from Japan or something. Apparently, he was quite the looker too, and uhm, since Briar worked with him and she was single, um.” He wrings his hands together. “But I don’t know who did what, or who started it, but then there’s a rumour that he got her pregnant and skipped town.”

“Is she actually pregnant?” I ask.

“I don’t know, I don’t really care,” he looks at me, crestfallen. “I just want to see her happy again. As you can see, she moved back after the rumours broke, and shut herself in her cabin, tight as a clam. I don’t even know how to help her.” He hangs his head low, the bulk of him shrivels down, and he is no longer the intimidating giant with the shotgun.

Mrs. Mathilda pokes her head from the top of the staircase. “She has calmed down,” she says. “Scott dear, bring us some tea.”

Scott stays behind, and we go up to the bedroom. The curtains are now pulled back and so is her hair, fastened together into a low pony tail. Her eyes are still red, but all her rage has left her.

“Go on,” prompts Mrs. Mathilda.

Briar clears her throat, “what do you need to know?” Her voice comes out like sandpaper. Scott comes up the stairs with a tray. He blows on the surface of the tea before he hands it to Briar. She accepts it with a small smile.

“Um, what happened to Kikuyu? After the rumours, he’s now missing and I need to find him,” I say.

She takes a sip of the tea, and clears her throat again. “Um, well,” she hesitates and looks up at me. “I don’t know where he went,” she admits.

I try not to let it show on my face, but I feel unbelievably defeated at her admission. I pinned all my hopes on her to give me a starting point.

Scott offers a cup to Mrs. Mathilda, but she declines. Viktor accepts a cup and blows on the liquid a few times, then hands it to me. I take a sip, but the tea makes me uncomfortably hot.

“But, I can tell you what happened before he left,” she says. “The rumours, they’re not true.”

Scott looks relieved.

“But Scott, you might not want to be here to listen.”

“It’s okay, I can take it.”

She takes another sip and begins her story. “After I moved into town, it was pure luck that I was hired for the secretary job. Dr. Kikuyu needed to fill the role quick and I was the first person to apply. I had no experience with databases and what not, but he was so patient and taught me how to do my job. I saw my bank account balance grow, and I thought, soon, I’ll be out of this cramped little town.”

“I made friends with the local ladies, and they all raved about how handsome and rich he was. They told me he would be my ticket out of here. Even though I really want to leave this town, I never saw him as my ticket. He was so sweet, and I liked him for being him. But he did tell me that he planned to stay here for 3 years, max, then planned to move to the states or go back to Japan. And I thought, in an ideal world, he would take me with him.”

“Soon, I found myself falling in love. I tried to get him to open up to me. I asked him about his past, and why he moved to a sleepy little beach town, but he wouldn’t give me anything. Everything I learned about him is hanging on the walls of his office. He went to medical school in the states and worked at a hospital in Tokyo. He doesn’t have any pictures of his family anywhere.”

“But even if I don’t know anything about him, how could I not love him? He was soft-hearted, smart, and the mystery only added to his allure. He bought me lunch sometimes from the deli next door, but he wouldn’t cross the professional line. So, one day, I thought I should make a move,” she looks at Scott, then looks down into her teacup. “After he closed up the clinic for the night, I asked him out for dinner. He just laughed nervously and politely declined, and that was that.”

“I rushed home that night. I felt crushed. It would be a dream to leave this town behind with him, off to a new city… The days after, I spun into a habit of eating when I get sad, so I ballooned up and shut myself at home. I called in sick to the clinic, but I knew he would be okay. He doesn’t get a lot of clients. I would bump into the local ladies at the grocery store, and they noticed I was gaining weight and they thought I was putting on weight for his baby. I didn’t want to face them and tell them that I actually got rejected, and now the town’s inflamed with rumours! And Kikuyu is gone, and I don’t know what to do!” 

Mrs. Mathilda strokes her back while she cries. “It’s alright dear. The rumours will pass.”

“After the rumour got out, his clinic was bombarded with people trying to figure out if he actually got you pregnant,” says Scott. “He’s a smart man, I’m sure he’s hidden himself in a bunker somewhere.”

Briar stops crying for a moment, “well people tell me they see him hanging out at the bridge, but that’s hardly a hiding place.” Briar looks up to us. “Sorry, I can’t be of more help. I’ll let you know if I remember anything useful. Even though he rejected me, I still care for him as a person and I want him back just as much as you do.”

I give her the address of the dormitories and we leave her to recover. Scott escorts us to the tram station, where we wait for the next carriage. The station is empty except for us and the station master, who is busy watching a soap opera on his phone.

I sit on the only bench, exhausted by the walk from Briar’s cabin to the station.

“We should be back at the compound a little after lunch,” says Viktor. “How are you feeling?”

I don’t answer him. I feel feverish and Viktor touches my forehead again. His hand feels pleasantly cool on my skin. I hold my hand over his to keep it there, but he slips from my fingers to open his pack to find the bottle of painkillers. I take the medication and chase it with water.

He unravels my bandaged hand and grimaces. He tells me not to look down while he wraps it in fresh gauze. I close my eyes, too tired to keep them open. I hear Viktor ask the station master if he can make an exception and run the tram early since we are the only ones in the station and the carriage will be back before the next scheduled departure. I don’t hear the station master’s reply, but Viktor says something else. His tone is more urgent this time. Viktor comes back and tells me that I should sleep while we wait. He offers me his shoulder and I nod out like a light.

**

When I wake up, I am in a small white bed and my hand is in a new bandage. I don’t feel the lick of the fever, but I am hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, which is overkill for an infection.

There is another patient in the room and he doesn’t wave back when I greet him.

“I’m at a hospital, right?” I ask him.

“No, you’re on Mars,” he says, then pulls his privacy curtain closed.

I ring for a nurse, who shows up shortly. I don’t say anything and let him fill me in.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” he says. “I’ll get the doctor and the Moderator.”

I look up at the clock on the wall. It is some time after five in the afternoon. I feel bad for making Viktor wait for me all day. I check the monitor attached to me. My heart rate and blood pressure seem fine. My temperature is normal. I grab the clipboard hanging at the front of my bed and flip through my medical chart. I was admitted to the hospital at one in the afternoon by Viktor. After admission, they disinfected my hand and gave me a shot of antibiotics and a stronger analgesic for my fever. I am prescribed a medication I don’t recognize, but I suspect it to be a series of antibiotics mixed with something else.

I place the clipboard back on the hook and sit on the bed.

The nurse walks in with a doctor and someone who is not Viktor.

“Hi Yuuri, I’m Dr. Akila,” she says. She picks up my chart and goes through it while the nurse takes my vitals. “You came in with a nasty infection, and we’ve taken care of that for you. I’ve prescribed a set of medication which you should take twice a day. Since you’ve come from the mountains, we’ll keep you here for a few days to make sure nothing else manifests.”

“A few days?” I ask. “It’s just an infection. I should be an outpatient.”

“You’re right. In any other part of the world, we would send you home to recover, but there have been several cases of people coming from the mountains with something serious. They come to our little hospital and get a shot of antibiotics. We send them on their way, and they develop sepsis and die,” she says without batting an eyelash. “Not much is known about infections endemic to this part of the world, but Mr. Katsuki, I strongly recommend you stay with us, just to be safe.”

The nurse reports the vitals to Dr. Akila, and then writes it down on my chart. They both leave.

“You’re not Viktor,” I say to the tall man lingering in my room.

“I’m glad to know the infection didn’t affect your vision,” he says to me in a voice that is not completely unfriendly. “I’m Moderator Chris,” he says. “Viktor has other duties to manage, so I’m here to make sure you’re okay.”

Another Moderator… 

Chris seems to sense my confusion, and speaks before I do. “And yes, Viktor has a job outside of you… God, he does not stop talking about you,” he groans, half laughing.

“Wait, what?” I ask, the last part of his comment eaten up by a loud trolley rolling down the hall.

“Nothing,” Chris says with a smile. “It looks like you had a question?”

“Since you’re a Moderator, do you have your own participants?”

“Well, I am a Moderator, but I’m in training, so...” He looks as if he were about to say something else, but he stops. “That’s all I can say for now, but you’re lucky you have Viktor. He’s an excellent Moderator, one of the best.”

He leaves me alone for the evening.

There is not much to entertain me while I wait in my room, so I go exploring. I drag my heart rate monitor and IV drip down the hall. The hospital is very small. It must contain anywhere from 10 to 20 doctors and a staff of 100 or so. I walk to the front desk and ask for access to my personal belongings. The receptionist gives me my journal and pen, which I take back to my room.

When I return, the other patient has two guests in the room. They talk quietly as I flip through the pages of my dark blue journal, rereading passages from the time I spent on the ship. They are as boring as I remember them to be. I write down my progress on the missing _Aurist Kikuyu_ and about my climb up the mountain. I wonder if I should also record the strange fever dream I had about Viktor, but I forgo it, and write about what Briar told me about Kikuyu. I revise my impression of him, and regret that I had thought so poorly of Kikuyu from the beginning when it was just a rumour spread by idle minds.

The nurse comes in and notifies the guests that visitation hours are now over and they must leave, then he escorts them down the hallway.

I continue writing about my adventures with Yuko and the story of her missing person, Clementine. When I finish, my hand is aching, and smudged with ink. I call the nurse to unhook me from the monitors so I can shower. He puts a plastic cover over my hand and tells me to keep it dry, then he asks if I need his help to shower, which I decline.

I shuffle to the bathroom and enjoy a nice warm shower, appreciating the creature comfort more than ever since my unpleasant encounter with the icy water from the hose.

I examine myself in the mirror and take a close look at my neck. It is perfectly free of any marks Viktor might have left on me.

I shuffle back to my room. The night lights are on, now that the sun had set for several hours.

What I didn’t expect is Viktor sitting in a chair at the foot of my bed, flipping through my medical chart. He looks up at me and smiles. “These charts always read like gibberish to me.” He puts the clipboard back. “How’s the hand?”

I remove the plastic covering and discard it in a bin, “it feels fine.”

“Good.”

He ushers me to the bed and tucks me in. He touches his hand to my forehead, “you’re not burning up anymore.”

“The doctors gave me antibiotics to control the infection so my body doesn’t need to turn into an inferno to fight them off,” I say. “I’m fine now.”

He sits at the edge of my bed. His hand creeps closer to mine, then stops. “Sorry, I had to leave. I had to get back to my other duties,” he says with a frown. “I had someone else make sure you were alright.”

“Chris, right?”

He nods.

“How exactly does he train to become a Moderator?” I ask him. “And what exactly do you moderate?”

He laughs, “that’s a story for another day. And you don’t need to worry about it. Just focus on solving your mystery. I’m sure you have your work cut out for you.”

He brushes strands of hair from my face with his fingers, then tells me he will visit tomorrow.

I didn’t see the nurse hovering outside the door until Viktor greets him in passing. The nurse comes in and latches me back onto the machines and administers my medication and changes my gauze. I ask him to unhook me from the IV machine since I prefer to eat food instead of absorbing it from the drip. He doesn’t, but offers to bring it up with the doctor tomorrow.

**

“Did you know Dr. Kikuyu?” I ask Dr. Akila. She is scribbling notes into my medical chart.

“You assume that all doctors know each other,” she says to me. “But yes, I did know Dr. Kikuyu before he disappeared.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Well, what do you want to know?” she places the clipboard back on the hook and sits in the chair at the foot of my bed. She tells the nurse to go to the next patient without her.

“Do you know where he went?”

“Nope.”

“What about where he was from,” I try.

“Okay, I know this one,” she says excitedly. “But it’s a bit of a sad tale, so don’t spread it around. Two years ago, there were rumours among the medical professional community that a big shot was coming to town. Then Kikuyu showed up and we were all confused. Not to talk poorly of the field otology, it’s a very niche field. It’s not exactly the hottest specialization.”

I nod in agreement.

“We heard that he came from a big shot hospital in Japan. One of the doctors had a friend doing her residency there, and he called her up and asked about Kikuyu—”

“Can you give me the contact of the doctor with the friend in Japan? Or even better the phone number of the friend in Japan?”

“Uh sure, but I’ll need to look it up,” she says, then continues the story. “So, turns out that Kikuyu used to be one of the top trauma surgeons in Japan! She told us that there was an incident, and he had to treat his brother. The operation was successful, but his brother died a few days later in the Intensive Care Unit. He sought a different specialty and then he arrived here in town and opened up an otology clinic. Sad huh?” she asks.

I nod again.

“He doesn’t really talk to the other doctors in the community. He just stays holed up by himself. Too bad there are so many rumours about him and his secretary.”

“I talked to the secretary yesterday—that was why I was in the mountains. She isn’t knocked up and it is just a rumour.”

Dr. Akila taps a finger on the side of her cheek. “Well, why did he skip town then?”

“Maybe to wait until the rumours die down?”

“Well, that’s none of my business,” she says.

I ask her to remove my IV, which she does and switches me to a meal plan. She watches me take my medication before leaving.

I stay in bed, and record what I learn into my journal, then I run out of things to write about. I look at the binding at the spine of the journal. A third of it was torn out by the previous owner, making it lumpy when I write on the left side of the page.

The nurse lets Viktor into the room like a fresh breath of air. I tell him that I feel fine today and that my blisters are almost healed. I tell him about my luck when I discovered that my doctor knew of Kikuyu, and that I feel like I’m making progress on my missing person. We talk a bit more about the overcast weather and the perpetually angry ocean, and then I ask about Yuko.

“She’s doing well,” says Viktor. “She’s a bit further ahead compared to everyone else, but it doesn’t matter what pace you go at, as long as you finish.”

“Is she lonely without me?” I ask.

He laughs, “I’m sure she misses you, though she now walks with Alex.”

I pause. Alex is Viktor’s walking partner. “Then who do you walk with?” I ask.

“I can walk alone. I’m a big boy.” He smiles.

After Viktor leaves, I get bored, and find myself barely able to stay awake. I didn’t notice this earlier, but I suspect my medication contains an antihistamine, making me drowsy. But this makes sense, my hand was inflamed. I roll over and take a quick afternoon nap.

When I wake, a slip of paper sits at the end of my bed. There is also a covered tray of food, waiting to be consumed. I examine the note. It has a name and phone number scrawled on it. It’s already night time, and I wonder what time it is in Japan.

The receptionist tells me it’s late morning in Japan. She offers the hospital phone line for me to use. I wait for them to pick up, but the phone just rings.

I return to my room and eat my dinner. The nurse comes in to feed me medication. I take it and fall asleep.

In the morning, I try again after Viktor visits me. The receptionist tells me it’s the middle of the night in Japan, but I try anyway. The phone rings, then someone picks up. It’s been a while since I’ve had to speak Japanese, but I try my best.

“Hello?” she asks.

I can hear the sound of telephones ringing and monitors beeping. She must be at the hospital.

“Hi, my name is Yuuri Katsuki. I’m investigating Dr. Kikuyu’s recent disappearance. I’m currently collecting information about him in hopes of figuring out where he is now. I was told you have some information you might be able to share with me?”

The line goes silent for a moment, and I wasn’t sure if she hung up on me.

She replies in a low voice, “the last I spoke to him was over two years ago, and even then, I didn’t know him well.”

“It’s okay,” I reassure her. “I actually want to ask about a specific incident. I think it may help me shed some light on understanding him, and how he disappeared.”

“Okay,” she says, still not reassured.

“I was told that Kikuyu used to be a trauma surgeon, then switched to otology. What made him switch?”

She sucks in her breath between her teeth. I hear a door close, and the room is quieter.

“Mm, that was a while ago from when I was an intern. From what I remember, Dr. Kikuyu received a patient from a different hospital. The patient was airlifted to Tokyo because the town he came from didn’t have the equipment and expertise to treat those kinds of burns. The more senior surgeon offered to treat his brother, but he refused and insisted on doing the surgery himself, which was successful. He tended to his brother everyday at the ICU. We all knew he wouldn’t recover, and we weren’t surprised when he died after the third day.”

“But after that, he was a shell of a man, and it really hurt us. He was the go-to guy that we all relied on, our safety net when we don’t know a procedure because we were too intimidated to ask Dr. Okinawa,” she says, laughing. “Me and the other residents used to play a game. Whoever can catch Dr. Kikuyu in regular day clothes will win a jackpot. Every week we added more money to the pot, but we ended up donating it because Dr. Kikuyu was always in scrubs. It was like he lived at the hospital.”

“He went on a leave of absence to arrange for his family’s funeral in his home town, and to settle any business. We later learned that the rest of his family perished in the fire. When he came back, he withdrew from trauma surgery, even though that was where his talents lay. He was one of the best. Everyone was surprised when he picked otology, something about ‘the worst that can happen is going deaf.’”

“Being the genius that he is, he gained his accreditation in the field of otology in half a year, then he moved to a random town by the ocean. He said it would remind him of his family. Poor guy, he was already living alone in Tokyo when he lost his family. It must have been devastating to lose everyone he loved in a single fire.” She sighs. “No one has heard from him after that, but I guess he’s missing now? ”

“Yes, he is missing. I was hoping I can ask a family member or a close friend if they knew where he went,” I say.

“I don’t think he was particularly close to his family. It’s hard to right? Unless you’re super senior, you’re always on-call, and it’s hard to fit a life in when all you have are odd hours here and there. For crying out loud, I’m taking your call at three in the morning, because that’s when I’m free to talk. I’m surprised you even dared to call me at this time. You’re probably a doctor as well, aren’t you?”

I try to recall, but my head hurts. “No, I’m not a doctor. I’m just calling from somewhere else. That’s all.”

I thank her, then I hang up the phone. The nurse at the front desk looks at me, “is everything okay?”

I vaguely nod my head. “Yes, everything is fine.”

There’s a cold feeling in my chest. The story is tragic and unsettling, but I can’t precisely place my finger on it. I crawl back into bed, my roommate already snoring away, and I fall asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey reader,
> 
> I hope you're enjoying this strange trip. This chapter is where it all goes down(hill). 
> 
> I made a music playlist to go with the story. You can listen to it here: https://bit.ly/2MPnZ2S

“You’re back!” says Yuko. She sits beside me on the bench and she gives me a brief hug.

Today marks another week on this island. Although I have been in the hospital for four days, so much has happened without me. I see Yuko talk with other participants who she normally doesn’t talk to. She even introduces me to some of them, but I don’t know what to say. Everyone seems much more tightly knit, and I’m the loose thread hanging out.

Viktor takes a seat at the roundabout and begins the meeting.

Alex goes first. She ties up her hair to keep it out of her face, then opens her notebook. She hesitates and whispers something to Viktor. 

He listens to her. His smile turns into a look of concern, and he says something to her, but I’m too far to hear.

“Hi everyone,” Alex says. “I did some more digging, and I was able to get in touch with Jesse’s friends. I learned more about his secrets, but I don’t feel comfortable exposing them to everyone because I feel they are quite personal,” she looks at Viktor. He reassures her with a nod to keep going.

“Anyway, I feel like I’m really close to figuring it out. I’m just waiting on one more interview with the last person he spoke with before he disappeared, so at the next meeting, I’ll be enjoying my prize! Do I get anything special if I am the first person to figure it out?” she asks Viktor.

“Nice try, but no,” he says to her. “Alex is already close to solving the case, but does anyone have any advice or insight?” he asks.

Nobody says anything, then we move around the circle until it is Yuko’s turn.

“So last time, I learned that Clementine and her carpenter boyfriend lived in the mountains and he offered to build them a cabin in town so she doesn’t need to travel as far. I thought that was very sweet of him to offer, and after three years of dating, they got married!”

“They moved to the edge of the town. They set their wedding to be in the middle of summer, and while they waited to be wed, they worked on the house together, building it from scratch with the help of some of their relatives from the mountain. When they finished, they got married in their new cabin.”

“Everything went so well, at least according to her friend,” says Yuko. “Clementine enjoyed her steady job at the preschool. Her husband’s carpentry business was thriving, because the town lacked a good furniture store. One day, when Clementine visited Grace, she noticed that Clementine was bigger than usual. First, she thought city living made her soft in the middle, but over the months, it soon became clear that she was pregnant!”

“Clementine never officially announced it, even when she was about to give birth, but her friends and family were easily able to guess… and that’s where my trail runs cold. Her friend told me that she never saw her again. Clementine was due to give birth any time, but I checked with the hospital and there was never any record of Clementine or her husband. I’m guessing she had a homebirth, but I’m still working on it.”

I give everyone an update on my case, but I feel like I’m stuck again. All I know about Kikuyu is that he switched specialities after an incident which claimed his family, and that the rumours were not true. No one offers any suggestions or help.

The remaining participants give their updates. It seems like I’m no longer the furthest behind, but I fear that I will sink down to the bottom again.

In my room, I find a slip of paper wedged in the door. It is a delivery notice. I walk to the front desk of the dormitory and exchange my slip of paper for a thin orange envelope with something hard and thin inside.

I walk back to my room and sit at my desk. Inside the envelope is a letter and as I suspected, a key.

I found the key to the clinic while cleaning. You probably need this more than I do. Don’t touch the patient files, those are confidential.

-Briar

**

I lock the door behind me when I enter the waiting room of the clinic. Just like the exterior of the building, the interior is boring and plain. A popcorn ceiling, grey carpeting, and generic pictures of ear anatomy hang from the white washed walls. The aesthetics betray no provenance of the owner, a young doctor trained at an elite medical school. I sneeze from the dust collected on the surfaces. It feels like the clinic has been around for at least a couple of decades.

I walk around the clinic, trying each door as I pass through. The clinic contains two treatment rooms, an office—which I assume belongs to Kikuyu, a washroom, a storage closet, and several nooks and crannies, perfect for hiding plastic models of the inner ear, or charts about hearing loss.

None of the doors are locked, not even his office. Kikuyu must trust Briar a lot.

A small clock hangs on the wall of the office, faithfully counting off the seconds of the day. Kikuyu’s desk sits between the two narrow windows covered by plastic vertical blinds. They sway slightly after I open the door, highlighting the dust motes floating through streaks of the weak sunlight.

Neat stacks of papers sit on Kikuyu’s desk. I rife through them. Most of them are academic papers from otology publications, but tucked at the bottom of the pile are papers about current methodologies in trauma surgery from top tier journals. I check the other piles of paper, which has a sticky note attached to them, _Ask Briar to file_; they are this months’ property and energy bills. I flip through some of them, apparently, the clinic’s lease will end next month.

I open the right-hand drawer. Nothing out of the ordinary pops out, just some sparse office supplies. I check the left-hand drawer. A single blue notebook lays at the bottom of the empty drawer. It looks almost identical to the one I have, but this one has all its pages intact. It’s a popular book, several million people probably own one. 

I sit in the cushy chair behind Kikuyu’s desk and I flip through the pages and realize that it is not a business log book, rather, it is a personal journal. According to my mental math, the earliest entry is a couple of months after he moved to the town. The last entry is a month ago, two weeks before he went missing.

I’ll eventually read the whole thing, but for now, I read anything that looks interesting.

  
  
I thought things would be easier in this town, but I am sorely mistaken. I picked this town hoping the ocean would help me make peace with myself, but it is a constant reminder of my failure to my family and to myself. The shore looks just like home with the seagulls and the sun sets in the same way, and I hate that I look at something I used to love with so much disdain.  
  
I should have visited them when I had the chance. I always banked on the excuse of a heavy course load. Of course, they would understand, they’re too kind and I don’t deserve them.

The clock ticks in the background. I feel a tightness in my chest, which I chalk up to the dust. I force myself to cough a few times to clear my chest. I flip to another page. There are some wrinkly spots on the paper where drops of water have fallen and dried.

  
  
I had that dream again. My mind keeps on replaying the same day. My therapist says that I should write about it, so here it is, for the fifth time…  
  
It was a last minute on-call, and I was the only one available at such short notice. It seems like it’s common knowledge that I don’t have a life or family, and I was the only person available since Phichit was sick with pneumonia after a patient sneezed in his face. The first patient of the night was a drunk who got hit by a car after walking into traffic. I left him in stable condition and I went to the breakroom, ready to sleep, then Minako broke through the door, informing me of a patient being airlifted to the hospital from Hasetsu.  
  
In the operating theatre, I almost didn’t recognize her with the burns all over the body, but I knew the tattoos. Mari cut her hair real short, even shorter than mine. Later I found out that she cut it because her friend was undergoing chemo. I never met her friend, but I recognized her at the funeral, because she had the same wavy hair as Mari.  
  
Minako offered to treat this case, but I insisted. I don’t know what got into me. I wasn’t supposed to

The entry ends abruptly. I slam the journal shut right as a nauseating sense of deja-vu descends over me. The clock is too loud against my ear. I breathe in gasps, choking on the air like my lungs are full of water. I rush out of the clinic and sprint back to the compound, ignoring Alex when she waves to me.

The ocean and the greenery blur as my feet pound across the boardwalk. My legs are tight with use and my head throbs in pain, but I persist until I see the familiar outline of the compound break through the tops of the trees. I rush into my room in a panic, pacing back and forth on the floor. I turn the opacity of my window to zero, so no one can see me. I turn off the lights, then I turn them back on when I realize being in the dark made everything worse, confusing me. I hate being confused.

I am drenched in sweat, like I had just come in from the rain. My chest is in a vice, I can’t breathe. Bile shoots up my throat and I hang my head over the toilet, panting and tired, waiting for whatever possessed me to leave. Nothing comes out of my mouth.

I wrangle my clothes off, and turn the shower to the coldest setting until my skin turns red and painful. My body sears all over like I had swallowed a burning star. My tongue sits thickly in my sour mouth, and I rinse it out with water.

An overwhelming sense of dread falls on me. It feels like there’s something that wants to rip out of my chest, but at the same time, I’m in the crushing fist of a monster. I blank out, and I’m on the washroom floor. I’m not supposed to be here. I grab the washroom counter with a trembling arm to help me up, but all the fight has been squeezed out of me. I can barely stand without darkness entreating my vision, so I crawl slowly into bed, and I pass out. 

**

I wake up to the sound of knocking. It’s persistent, but all I want is for it to go away. After the fourth bout of knocking, it stops, and I sink back into unconsciousness.

**

I turn up the opacity of the window. It’s night time, and the sky is cloudy as ever. A heavy fog rolls in from the ocean, obscuring everything except the rocky outcrop hugging tight to the shore. The fog seems perilous to even the most seasoned navigators. The waters wave to me, beckoning me to the shore.

I pull on my jacket and leave my room.

The ocean air feels stale on my face like breathing in the air of a freezer. I walk to the beach, selecting a particularly giant grey-blue rock with tiny black specks. I sit on it, and take off my shoes and socks. It is right at the edge, the icy water snip at my feet, and I doubt that this is a good idea.

I watch the angry water churn ceaselessly onto the rocks. Guilt strikes through my body, hitting me again and again, until I break. A sob chokes out of me, and it is lost to the wind. I cry until I’m haggard, confessing anything I can remember. But there isn’t much. I don’t know if I cry because I never had anything to tell, or because I lost it all. The ocean must be mad at me, for it has been churning in rage during all the time I have been here, but it accepts no apology, and continues seething.

**

There is a knock at the door again, but I just want to be left alone.

“Yuuri, it’s time to go into town,” says Yuko. She knocks again. Alex tells her that they should get going.

I wait it out until I hear them leave, then I bury my head into my pillow.

I would have stayed in my room longer if I am not so hungry. I walk to the mess hall. Outside, it is another cloudy day. I spot the large rock from last night, and the water is still at the edge of it, even at low tide. My tummy rumbles again, and I walk a little faster to the mess hall. No one is there, and I help myself to whatever food that is left over from breakfast, and take a handful of snacks back to my room.

I sit on top of my desk, staring out the window, watching the ocean. It’s hypnotic, soothing, and terrifying. The more I look at it, the heavier this phantom guilt weighs over my head, until I’m fully submerged. I sit here, waiting for the day it drags me into its undertow, extinguishing my flame.

There are knocks on my door around dinner time. It’s Yuko, I don’t hear Alex. She tells me that she left dinner outside my door and snuck me an extra pudding cup.

I fall asleep.

I wake when the ocean calls to me again from beneath the foamy white fog. When I was young, I thought that if I can get my hands on a cloud, it would taste like cotton candy or something sweet. I am mistaken, it feels more like a damp mist on my skin as it passes through me every night. 

I sit at the black specked rock. The ocean curses my name, over and over and over, spitting it back at me while I listen and watch for any tiredness. Of course, the ocean never gets tired, and I stare at the water until the fog recedes.

People will wake soon, and I return to my room to sleep again.

**

When the ocean beckons, it is dark.

Intense hunger claws at my stomach. I must have slept for a day. I eat the snacks I stowed away in my drawer, and the pudding cup I saved from yesterday’s meal. I have no spoon, so I dig my fingers into the custard, licking the liquid that trails down my hand.

I walk to the ocean and sit on my rock. I touch my fingers to the water to rinse off the tacky pudding residue. My palms still hold the tenderness from the infected blisters, barely healed over. I leave my hand in the freezing water for a moment until I shiver from the biting wind. The fog is thick as ever, but my eyes stay trained on the swirling grey water, following every curl and break with my eyes. Watching for an answer, listening for forgiveness, but all I hear is endless rage.

“There you are.”

I jump at the voice. I was sure no one would be awake at this hour. Viktor skips over the large rocks of the beach until he reaches me. I briefly consider jumping into the ocean to get away, but if I had to be honest, that was never an option. The ocean terrifies me.

He presses his hand on my shoulder to steady himself before he sits down next to me. “You didn’t show up for the communal walk, yet you were in bed in the morning. I thought you were just sleeping in, not wandering around every night. The nightguard tipped me off.”

I don’t want to talk to him, or anyone.

“Yuuri,” he says, placing a hand on my shoulder, like I would find it comforting. “What happened?”

I hug my legs to my chest, and rest my chin on my knees. I ignore him and look straight on into the ocean. 

“Yuuri, please, talk to me,” he says.

The rest of the night passes without another word exchanged between us. Viktor stays with me, watching rapt at the waters until the early hours of the morning. I get up and walk back to the compound. He trails me to my room, and watches me close the door.

**

The next night, Viktor beats me to my usual place on the rock. He has his backpack with him.

He unzips it and passes me a thermos, then hands me a spoon.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” he asks me.

I dip the spoon into the soup. I can tell it’s not leftovers from the mess hall. The beef and vegetables lack the technical precision and uniformity of the food processing machines. I forgot food can be this warm. Viktor wraps a blanket around me and hands me a roll of bread. He tells me to dip it into the soup, and I do just that. The bread is soft, and smells yeasty and buttery, leaving smears of oil on my hand. When I’m done, I wipe my fingers on my pants, and watch the ocean.

He doesn’t try to talk to me again, and for that, I am grateful.

**

The next handful of nights pass like this. Viktor is always there when I watch the ocean. He brings me food and a blanket, then he sits silently next to me, like it is the most natural thing in the world.

I wonder what endless patience he has. What wellspring of good temperance he draws from to spend every night with me in the cold, while I pity and loath myself for something I don’t understand. Was this what Chris meant when he said that Viktor is a good Moderator?

“Are you babysitting me?” I ask him.

At first, he looks at me with shock, then it mellows into relief.

“No,” he says.

“Then why are you here?”

A long silence passes. I assume the wind muffled my question before it got to him. I don’t say anything about it, after all, I’m hardly in any position to criticize him for not speaking.

“I like spending time with you,” he says, looking straight into the water. I can’t tell if his ears are pink from the cold or from an unseen blush.

I laugh.

That must be the most coddled answer ever. I would have accepted something like, _it’s my job, _or_ I get paid overtime_. I guess my feelings seem quite delicate for him to fabricate such a lie.

But, he’s not laughing or smiling. He turns away before I can see him and I catch a quick glimpse at his face, flushed pink. Our arms no longer touch slightly.

We spend a while like this. The silence between us loses its comfort. I expected Viktor to leave, but he stays on the rock next to me. I watch the pink fade from his ears. I forget the ocean in front of me when I wonder how I should patch my gaff with him. There’s isn’t much I can offer him.

I arrived with a small suitcase and modest belongings, so I have no possession that he would want. I can barely remember who I am, so I have no knowledge I can give him. I only have my name and a face.

“Do you want to share the blanket?” I offer, unwrapping myself from the covers.

He turns around and awkwardly shifts to my side on his elbows. He wears a small smile, and takes the other wing of the blanket around him. He gets close to me. Close enough that I can smell his soap when he rests his head on my shoulder. His hair feels slightly damp on my cheek, he must have showered earlier. I don’t move away like I did in my dream. I don’t feel scared anymore.

The night passes, dissolving the fog until I can see the bear rock again. Between yawns, I tell Viktor about the man at the deli, who tossed pebbles onto the bear’s back with his brother when they were children. He says that if the tide ever dips low, we should do that as well.

I don't mention that the tide never changes. The water will never dip low enough for us to walk to the bear rock.

**

The ocean still calls to me, but I don’t look at it like I used to. The fog is thicker tonight, wrapping everything in a misty haze. When I look at my hand, it looks milky like it is not at full opacity. With Viktor, I sit on our rock, wrapped together in the blanket.

Tonight, he brings me ravioli in some sort of mushroom sauce. It’s a little salty, but it still tastes good. He also brings hot cider, which he drinks from the thermos lid, doubling as a cup. Cinnamon and star anise waft into the air and I breathe it in. 

After I finish eating, I drink hot cider from the cup. We sit there. He watches the water, I watch him. His chest rises up and down in even breaths, and I feel so calm when I’m next to him like this.

“I um, read Kikuyu’s journal,” I say to him.

He turns to me, waiting to hear what I have to say.

“In his journal, Kikuyu wrote that he has bad dreams about treating his sister in the operating room after his family’s home burned down with his parents inside. He feels guilty for not visiting them more often before the accident, and I feel like I un-understand h-him--” Tears well up in my eyes. I remove my glasses to avoid getting them wet.

Viktor holds my trembling hands in his. He pulls the blanket tighter around us, and presses my head into his shoulder. He tells me that it’s okay to cry, and that I should let it out.

I try to calm down, but the more I push it down, the stronger it gets, until my eyes are overflowing with so many tears. I cry for so many different little things. I cry because I can’t remember who I am, for Kikuyu and his dead family, for Briar who is stuck in this town, for Scott’s unrequited love, for the widowed Mrs. Mathilda, for the man at the deli who sacrificed his dreams so his brother can pursue his, for all the people who believe in the rumour, for the optician who broke my glasses.

I cry because I don’t understand why I’m here, or why the sky is always cloudy, or why the tide never changes, or why the sun doesn’t feel ‘right’ on my face, or why there are no locks on my door, or why my mirror is plastic, or why the utensils are dull, or why my notebook looks identical to the one in Kikuyu’s office.

I can’t stop crying.

And Viktor holds me through it. Silent as ever and breathing into my hair as the wind whips around us, as the waters turn endlessly, pushing against the rocks with their foamy arms, only to collapse upon itself. 

I follow Viktor back to my room because it is difficult to see through my swollen eyelids and I don’t want to wear my glasses.

Right when he turns to leave, I ask him to stay with me. My mind is scattered everywhere, and he’s the only thing holding me together. I don’t take chances on myself. If left alone, I would end up hating myself even more. 

He pauses in place like a statue. He frowns, not at me, but at the space behind me, deep in thought.

Viktor takes a long time to think, and the answer doesn’t come as quickly as I thought it would.

I feel so stupid for being so needy. He has already comforted me so much, and this will be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. There are probably rules in place, to disallow such friendly behaviours between participants and Moderators. I’m asking him to break the rules, because I’m scared that I will cry again, and he won’t be there to help me through it—

“Sure,” he says quietly to not disturb the others.

We enter my room, and I instinctively try to lock the door, but I forgot the doors don’t lock. The room is dark, but my window is at half opacity to allow some moonlight in, casting half shadows on the walls. 

I watch him take off his coat and drape it on the back of my chair. He’s wearing a sweater underneath, and he takes that off too until he’s in an undershirt. He undoes his belt and pushes off his trousers, and I begin to think he has mistaken what I request of him.

“Do you have pajamas I can borrow?” he asks, pointing to his legs.

I open my armoire, feeling around for something soft. I unfold some fabric it in the air, squinting hard before I can tell it is a pair of loose pajama pants. I give it to him and mumble that I’m going to shower.

After splashing my face in cold water, it doesn’t look as bad as it feels. I take a quick shower, and clean myself up for bed. My head still feels stuffy from crying, but not as much after the shower.

The lamp is on, he’s sitting at my desk, tapping out something on his cellphone. Why don’t I have a cellphone? I won’t have anyone to call anyway. He looks up at me and smiles. He asks me how I’m feeling, and I tell him that I feel much better.

Then, he asks me if I still need him here.

…

I tell him that I still do.

He puts his phone on the desk and turns off the lamp. He turns the opacity of the window all the way down until it is pitch dark.

I feel around in the darkness for my covers. Viktor’s hand rests low on my back, keeping in touch so he doesn’t stumble. I get under my covers, and I feel the weight shift when Viktor gets into the bed too. I have no idea what I’m doing or what I was thinking when I asked him to stay with me. His arms encircle me and I can feel his breath close to my face. He smells like an afternoon spent in a kitchen steeped in cinnamon and allspice, waiting for the cider to boil. Waiting for me.

His hand gently combs through my hair, stroking it in even movements.

“Yuuri,” he whispers softly in the darkness, uncertainty shakes in his voice. His touch feathers around the curve of my cheek. “What am I to you?”

His hand hesitates before he buries it in my hair again. He pulls me even closer, when I take too long to answer. “Yuuri, please,” he whispers.

“I don’t want you to be anything but yourself,” I whisper back.

He cups my face with one hand. “Okay,” he says. “I can do that.”

He finds my hand under the covers and places it over his chest, so I can feel his heartbeat, racing through the night. Then he moves my hand so it wraps around his waist. I hold him close and that is the last thing I remember before I fall asleep. 

**

When I wake up, Viktor is gone from my bed. I turn the opacity until I can see that it is midday. I walk to the mess hall, no one is around for lunch. I struggle alone, sawing through the rubbery chicken with my knife. I can’t even tell if I’m using the handle or the blade.

I walk to the town, feeling out of place to be awake at this hour. The sun instead of the moon, sits in the sky, still hidden behind clouds.

On the main street, the bookstore is closed. The clinic door is still unlocked as I had left it when I rushed out several days ago. I feel guilty for not locking it when I left, but it doesn’t seem like anything was stolen.

Kikuyu’s journal sat squarely in the middle of the desk. I take a deep breath and open it.

I spend an afternoon in the office, reading through the journal in its entirety, trying to get into the same headspace as Kikuyu, but it’s hard. He has lived a life of loneliness and guilt, and I pity him. He thought that no one loved him, but I can see that he’s in a bubble on his own. Briar loved him, his colleagues respected him, and I’m sure his family loved him all the same.

Most of the entries are about the accident, but then I notice a change in the tone of his journal. Like Briar mentioned, he went to some bridge to think. He always noticed a fisherman on the bridge; his line dangled down all 40 meters into the river below them.

One day, he finally talked to the fisherman and he learned that his name was Nicholai, his neighbour running the bookstore. They seemed to hit it off pretty well. Nicholai taught him how to fish. When Kikuyu asked about the strange fishing spot in the middle of the bridge, Nicholai said that his back was killing him and he could no longer make the steep walk down to the river below them, so he had to improvise with a laughably long fishing line fused together from three regular lines. He caught fish from time to time, but they always managed to dislodge themselves before he reeled them all the way up the bridge.

Kikuyu introduced him to a chiropractor he knew in town. He tracked Nicholai’s improvements on a page he bookmarked with a sticky note. There were recordings of his pain levels, mentions of specific muscles, and exercises. _Excellent prognosis, _was scribbled at the bottom of the page.

They were planning for a fishing trip to Nicholai’s best kept fishing spot near the marsh. Kikuyu wrote a list of all the equipment for camping and fishing gear. His name was written next to some items. Nicholai’s name was written next to everything else, including _katsudon pirozhkis_—whatever that is.

I flip to the next page and it was just scribblings of the trip logistics. It wasn’t dated at the top.

Then there are no more entries.

I giggle to myself. Kikuyu went on a damn camping trip with his buddy and didn’t tell anyone. Hopefully, Kikuyu came back and was just holed away at home. Or maybe his fishing buddy will know where he is.

I leave the clinic, locking up.

According to the community bulletin with a map of the town, there are two bridges, both quite far away from where I currently am. The closest one seems like a four-hour walk roundtrip, which I can manage before the walk back to the compound. I copy the map into my journal, marking the major landmarks and streets.

I visit the deli again and buy a sandwich for the trip in case I get hungry.

“The bear stone, I can’t reach it at low tide,” I say to him.

He looks at me funny, then looks outside, “ah, I guess you’re right. I maybe remembered wrong?”

I embark on the walk, which takes me through small neighbourhoods, and back alleys, and parks. I follow my map to where it says a landmark fountain will be, but I can’t find them. I ask for help from some of the locals. One man tells me that a rusted fountain has been paved over to make space for a park several years ago, and that my map is outdated. Another woman tells me that the fountain is a 20-minute walk to the east.

I find the fountain, and sit on the ledge, eating half of my deli sandwich. I crack open the lemon soda, which the guy from the deli gave me. It tastes like sunshine. I hold the bottle up to the sky and imagine that the round lemon on the can is the sun, open and gleaming, instead of the fuzzy ball of light shrouded by clouds.

The sky gets darker. The clock tower reads that I am over my time. I should head back to town so I can make the walk back to the compound. I hope Alex doesn’t mind swapping partners.

I try to retrace my steps, but as the sun sets, it becomes harder to read the map in my journal. I can barely make out the letters without pausing under a glowing shop sign, and even then, the specific letters seem jumbled. I sigh, and resign myself to the fact that my handwriting is horrible. 

If I turn right, according to my map, I will walk into a park, yet I face another long and narrow street. I walk down the street, searching for any hint of green to suggest a park. I walk for a while, and find a large copse of trees nestled in a wide field with a walking path leading into it. This must be the park I am looking for.

As I walk, the path grows narrower and narrower, until all the gravel disintegrates into a dirt path, and the dirt path turns into trampled leaves and twigs. The trees run its branches over my body. My presence feels both violated and violating. I shouldn’t be here; I don’t want to be here. I force myself through the woods, hopeful that I will hit the other side soon. The branches become thicker and stronger, so I drop down and crawl my way through, avoiding the branches.

I hit a wall. I couldn’t make out its colour, but it is dark. If I follow its border, I’ll eventually find its entrance and enter the building with people who can help me return to town. Hopefully they have not all gone home.

I crawl along the wall. My knees and palms sting from grinding up against the small woodchips and brown pine needles. I get up to walk again. The wall seems to extend into what seems like forever with no break. I finally give up when my glasses get knocked off my face by an errant branch for the fourth time.

I turn around and try my best to navigate out of the woods. By some miracle, I spot the dirt path and follow it back to the field. The sun has disappeared from the sky and the moon is rising. I have definitely missed the walk back to town.

Pine needles fall from my clothes when I shake myself off and dust off the dirt from my pants. I feel so tired, and have no idea where I am, but at least I have the other half of my deli sandwich. I eat it at the mouth of the walking path, too tired to search for a nice spot to sit.

There is movement at the edge of the field. It’s a person walking their dog. I spring up and yell for their attention like a madman. They freeze in their tracks, then pick up their dog, and begin to briskly walk in the other direction.

I cram my sandwich back into my pack. “I need help!” I yell, running to them. “Please, I’m lost. I’m not going to hurt you!” 

I trip and fall flat on my face, eating a mouthful of grass. I feel for my glasses on the ground, patting gingerly to not accidentally break them or else I will have absolutely no chance of returning to town. The world is so dark without them. The person is probably half way home by now. I depress into the ground in frustration. I can’t help but feel disappointed in myself.

I hear footsteps and spring up to see the best I can. A shadow moves in the distance and I feel my glasses pushed onto my face. I blink and see a woman holding a dog leash, her pup trailing after her.

“Hi,” she says. “When I heard you trip, I realized that you’re too clumsy to be an axe murderer.”

I give a weak laugh. “Thanks.”

I ask her for directions back into the town. She says that the buses are not running anymore, but if I follow the blue bus line, I’ll get there in an hour by foot.

She walks me to the main road and we part ways. I eat the rest of my deli sandwich on my walk back.

I walk past neighbourhoods, and clusters of buildings, then everything becomes increasingly familiar, until I am back at the edge of town. I see Yuko outside a store front, consulting a map. I call to her.

“Yuuri!” she says. She runs to me, and grips me in a tight hug. “Where have you been?”

“I got lost,” I admit.

She continues squeezing me tight. “We were all so worried about you. We’re all combing through the town searching for you.” She finally lets go, and picks some overlooked bits of wood from my hair.

“Did you search for long?”

She shakes her head, “only for half an hour.”

We walk back to the main street. A voice echoes on the public announcement system to call off the lost persons search. I feel a bit flustered to see all the other participants gather around me. Viktor pats me on the back. I tell him that I figured out the mystery and he tells me talk to him when we return to the compound.

I walk next to Yuko. Viktor walks next to another participant who is not Alex.

“Where’s Alex?” I ask Yuko.

“Well,” she says excitedly, “Alex solved her mystery and is enjoying the prize!”

Even on the first day, Alex seemed to be the most driven and erudite among us. I had no doubt that she would solve the mystery sooner rather than later. 

“She solved it shortly after you had your nocturnal phase,” she says. “The last time I saw her was at lunch. We ate outside the deli, then split up. When it was time to walk back to the compound, Viktor made an announcement that she figured it out and won’t be joining us on the way back. I thought, ‘gee that was quite abrupt,’ but I guess she was so swept away with her prize that she didn’t bother staying an extra minute to even say goodbye to everyone. Maybe she’ll call us when she has time.”

“You’re pretty close to solving your case, right?” I ask her.

She must have heard the nervousness in my voice, because she starts laughing. She hugs me again, leaning off my shoulder as we approach the compound. “Don’t worry Yuuri. I’ll stick around to say goodbye.” She leans in close to me and whispers in my ear, “I’ll even call you and spoil the prize if you want me to.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

When we arrive at the compound, the moon is climbing higher into the clouds, so it’s probably around ten. Most of the participants go into the dormitory to relax for the night, leaving Viktor, who is waiting for Yuko to finish talking to me. “Looks, like Mr. Moderator wants to talk to you,” she winks at me.

She lets go of my arm, leaving me behind with Viktor.

I follow him across the compound to the roundabout. Electric lanterns illuminate the benches, giving a soft glow to his face. The tall grass whistles around us. I wait for him to speak, but he doesn’t. Instead, he grabs me in a tight hug, burying his face into my hair. I hug him back. While I was lost, a part of me was scared that I will never see him again. We stay together until he lets go of me.

I take a good look at him and wipe the tears from his face with my thumb. He gives me a wry smile, and takes my hand in his. A golden band I’ve never noticed glints off his finger. How could I have not noticed that he is married?

My face burns up in embarrassment about last night, about how fondly he hugs me, about… everything. I shouldn’t have asked him to stay with me yesterday. I take my hand from his grasp, and shove it in my pocket.

“You said that you solved the case,” he says to me, trying to meet my downcast eyes.

“Yea, I did,” I say to him. “I think Kikuyu went fishing with his friend Nicholai, and they’re still not back yet.”

An expression flickers over his face. He looks relieved before he’s smiling warmly at me again. He persistently takes my reluctant hand out of my pocket and unrolls my fist, stroking my hand with his thumb, almost affectionately. “That’s not quite right,” he says, “but you’re very close to finishing.”

He produces a ring identical to the one he is wearing from his pocket. I watch him in confusion, as he slides it onto my finger. His matching ring glints on his hand in the same place where one would normally wear a wedding band. 

“This used to belong to my parents. I wear it to remind myself of them,” he says to me. “It’s also a good luck charm, so I will never lose you again.”

I inspect it in the light. It is engraved in tiny Cyrillic letters.

“Please don’t take it off, okay?” He kisses my ring, then weaves his fingers in mine.

I nod, and watch the rings shine together. The weight is comforting around my finger, a memento I would never forget. He pulls me in and I rest my head on his shoulder, his gentle hand stroking through my hair.

I peek up at him, his face is drawn in worry. The more time I spend with him, the better I am at catching these glimpses of momentary distress. His feelings flow into me, and I want to stem the flow of sadness from where ever it might spring from. I extend my hand to his cheek, turning him to face me.

“Viktor,” I say softly. He flashes a quick smile at me, gazing into my eyes, but I can still feel the residual worry clouding his face. His eyes wander down to my lips for a moment, then he looks at me again. He takes me by the hand, ready to return to the dormitories, but I stay rooted to the spot.

“Is something wrong?” he asks. He smiles when I walk into his space and gently grasp his arms.

I press up to take his lips in a kiss. His breath is warm on my face and his hands pull me closer. The kiss is soft and comforting; intimate in the way that makes all the periphery fall away, quieting his stormy eyes into placid waters. No unknown thoughts, no hidden worries. Soft lips sliding against mine, and a flash of tongue quickens my pulse. Insync as mirror images as we meet in the middle, again and again. 

He presses us closer together until I can feel his warmth through his clothes. He cups my face with his palm, and I give him what he needs from me to feel safe. I kiss him as long as he needs me, until he is ready to pull away.

“Yuuri,” he whispers into the shell of my ear. Hiding his words even from the wind. “I want to stay with you tonight.”

I take him to my room, and before we sleep, I lay a kiss upon his head, and swathe him in a loving embrace.

**

The clerk snaps her bubble gum loudly as she flips through the booklet of bus schedules. Her long finger nail scans down the page. “Here it is, the bus comes every two hours, on the hour. You get off at the fifth stop.” She points her nail behind me. “Lucky you, here comes the bus now.”

I thank her and take one of the complimentary maps hanging on the information booth window. I pay the fare and sit in the middle of the bus. Aside from three other people, the bus is nearly empty.

The ride is bumpy, as expected of small-town roads. The journey is different from how I remembered it last night. Now that it is day time, I have a chance to admire the picturesque scenery. I get off at the fifth stop and see a bridge poking from the tops of pastel beach houses.

When I get to the bridge, my heart sinks. The bridge is wooden, and is at most five meters removed from the river running below it. There are no benches on the bridge to sit leisurely and fish. From what I remember in Kikuyu’s journal, the bridge is very high off the river, and has benches.

I sit and wait at the bus stop, hoping the return bus doesn’t take too long.

I run my finger over the ring. Even on a cloudy day, it is luminous as a pearl. Viktor told me that this is a good luck charm, but I have reservations about what he _really_ meant last night. We have known each other for roughly four weeks, and I don’t see why he would like someone like me. I have been nothing but a nuisance the entire time I was here, and he has been nothing but kind and patient.

…I pity myself, and pity him for picking someone like me. But, maybe he sees something in myself that I don’t.

The bus arrives. It’s driven by the same driver. I sit in the same seat back to town.

I go up to him and ask about the end of the line. This is the bus that goes from the east to the west side of town, and there’s another bus that goes from north to south. On the west side, there’s the ocean, but on the east, there is a large stretch of field with a single, one lane road leading out of town.

I ask him about the other bridge in town, and he says that if I keep on this bus, I’ll eventually pass it. He’ll tell me which stop to get off at.

I return to my seat, enjoying the scenery despite the bumpy ride. There isn’t much beyond the large fields and the occasional shack. This town must be miles away from the next hint of civilization.

“It’s here!” shouts the bus driver over the noise of the engine.

I hop off the bus. The bridge in front of me is gigantic. Large blue suspension beams crisscross along the wooden length of the bridge. There are benches at regular intervals, perfect for gazing at the river running below. I toss a small stone over the edge and watch it fall until it becomes too tiny for me to see.

I walk along the planks of wood. Names and dates are scrawled at the edges, hoping to evade the footsteps which fall upon it. I covertly study every person on the bench, looking for any tools for fishing, but there are none. I ask people if they’ve seen a fisherman around. One woman recalls a man with a really long fishing line who appeared frequently with a younger man, but unfortunately, she hasn’t seen them lately.

After exhausting myself, and with no leads, I sit on a bench and write in my journal. The bridge has an excellent view of glowing orb in the sky. I feel like this view is incomplete, like the sky should be burning with an orange and pink haze, but instead, it's just grey.

“Katsudon?”

A hand rests on my shoulder. I turn around to see a young man with blond hair and green eyes. He’s wearing a black suit in a size too small for him. His mouth hangs open in shock, then he abruptly clamps it shut. 

“Sorry, I got the wrong person,” he says to me, hurrying away. 

“No, wait, come back!” I call to him.

He turns back to me, tapping his foot. “I’m in a rush,” he says. 

“Have you seen a fisherman on this bridge? He hangs out with a guy named Kikuyu.”

His shoulders dampen, and he looks down at his feet. He pulls a scrap of paper from his bag and quickly scrawls something on it and tosses it to me. I barely catch it as it wafts around in the air.

“I really am in a rush,” he says, looking behind his shoulder, “but call me tomorrow and I can tell you what happened.” Then he rushes away.

I want to chase after him and make him explain why he is so cryptic, but I suppose I will figure it out soon enough. I barely catch the last bus back into town as it pulls away from the bus stop. It is the same driver as before. 

It’s only me and him on the bus, and he invites me to stand next to him near the head of the bus. I learn that he drives this route all day. It’s boring work as the ridership is scarce, but he endures it by listening to the radio or thinking about his wife. He shows me a picture of her in the plastic window of his leather wallet. They don’t have kids, but he’s looking forward to them one day when they saved up enough money.

He notices my ring, “you’re married too?” he asks me. 

“No, it’s a good luck charm.”

The driver laughs, “is that a joke? Come on, that ring is too expensive to be just for good luck.”

I shrug. “I caught the last bus of the day, so I think the good luck charm is working.”

“No, you fool. You caught the bus, because I’m nice,” he says, smiling at me.

I wave goodbye to the driver and walk back to the main street where we all meet up to return to the compound. I look around as we leave town and stroll down the boardwalk. Yuko is missing.

“Where’s Yuko?” I ask Viktor.

“It’s a little soon to announce it, but she figured out her mystery,” he says with some fanfare.

I look at him, confused. “She didn’t stay behind to say goodbye?”

He shakes his head. “I guess she got swept away with winning.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “No,” I insist. “Yuko wouldn’t leave me like that. She promised that she would say goodbye before she left.”

Viktor rubs the back of his neck, looking serious for once, “Yuuri, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you, but she’s gone now.”

“Can she come back to visit?”

“No,” he says solemnly. “She can’t.”

The rest of the group chatters with conversation, while there is silence between us. Seagulls cry in the distance as the last hues of blue disappear into black. Viktor tugs on my sleeve, making me slow down. We slowly drift to the back of the group and we keep some distance from the other participants.

In the cover of the night, Viktor curls an arm around my waist. He kisses my hair, and pauses to gauge my reaction. I soften my expression, still confused about why Yuko didn’t say goodbye. But he distracts me by leaning close to steal a kiss.

He looks concerned, and he kisses me again, more tentatively this time. It doesn’t feel right for him to gloss over Yuko’s sudden disappearance. There’s something not right about what he’s telling me and I slide his arm from my waist.

“Yuuri,” he whispers, calling after me. 

I walk quickly to speed up to the other participants, and he leaves me alone for the rest of the walk. When the participants disperse to their rooms, I follow them instead of staying behind. I knew Viktor would wait for me after everyone left, but I don’t feel like talking.

In my room, I observe him through my window. I keep the lights off so he wouldn’t see my silhouette. He’s speaking to another participant who stayed behind. After a lengthy conversation, the participant leaves to the mess hall.

My stomach rumbles, but I continue watching. Viktor runs a hand through his hair, his other hand on his hips. He paces briefly, then looks in the direction of the dormitory. Although he can’t see me, I feel as if he’s staring right at me. He takes a few steps towards the dormitory, then reconsiders and turns back to the boardwalk. I run through the dormitory and onto the beach. When I hit the boardwalk, I walk briskly, but lightly to conceal any sound I might make.

I keep a safe distance behind him to avoid detection. Whatever sounds my steps make are swallowed by the wind. I shouldn’t be surprised when he walks back to town, but I half expected him to jump into some secret passage way for Moderators. He walks into a residential area, with impressive homes overlooking the ocean. He approaches a nondescript building with several rose bushes at the front, albeit, they’re barren in late fall.

He slides a key card over a sensor. It unlocks and he swings the door open. I rush in, sticking my foot between the door and the frame to prevent it from closing. I wait a moment before I carefully enter the building.

The lobby looks nice, but it is plain white. No logos or pictures decorate the front desk. There is only one hallway and I follow it, leading me to a large sitting area containing high stacks of boxes on a trolley, and several arm chairs arranged around a low glass coffee table with an extravagant vase of flowers. I feel the petals between my fingers and they are so soft. I didn’t expect the flowers to be real.

I continue down the hallway, and it opens out into a very dim open area with large cubicles. I wonder which way Viktor went. I walk around the cubicles, trying to glean any information from the calendars and loose sheets lying on the desks. But everything seems like a generic office space.

Past the cubicles, there is a row of private offices. The hallway is completely dark—except for one office with light seeping through the bottom edge of the door. I inch as close as I can to the door. My heart is beating so loud in my chest that I’m concerned it’ll give away my presence. There’s a small sign on the door, _Viktor Nikiforov, Senior Moderator._

I hover outside and listen. He’s quietly humming some sad melody to himself while typing on a keyboard, then the clack of a pen, then the sound of flipping through sheets of paper. This repeats for a while and I sneak away from the door. As quietly as I can, I twist one of the doorknobs in the adjacent office to see if anything is locked in this office, and the door opens cleanly.

I sneak off to look for a good hiding spot. I walk back to the sitting area and crouch behind the boxes. And then, I wait.

…

I jolt awake when I hear an office door slam shut. I didn’t even realize I had fallen asleep, and I fluster because I forget where I am for a moment. Footsteps come this way, and I freeze. My hiding spot is perfect, but I can’t help but hold my breath as the steps walk past me and into the lobby. I hear the whoosh of the door as it closes shut.

I get up and walk to his office. I try the door, and it’s open as I expected. I turn on the lights. His office is cozy and tidy. There are certificates framed on the wall. Most of the text is in Cyrillic, but I can pick out some words written in English. From what I can piece together, Viktor graduated with a doctorate from a university in an unfamiliar town—_St. Petersburg_. I remember him mentioning it, something about the beach and smog.

There is a large filing cabinet behind his desk. I try it, and it’s locked. I search for a key in his drawer, but instead I find several sets of files. I open one of them, it’s a picture of one of the participants in the group. I open each file, looking for Yuko’s so I can figure out where she disappeared to.

I find Alex’s file and I read through it.

**ALEX CORMIER /Jesse**

Patient history: 

Alex is a patient struggling with her identity as a transgender woman (born male, identifies as a woman). Has previous history of undergoing therapy at ██████ hospital for gender dysphoria and depression.

Program entry date: Day 3, Cycle 27/ latency, 2 weeks.

Assigned name: Jesse

Patient status: Purgatory

**PROGRESS SUMMARY**

Week 1 – Jesse shows great potential for completing program with high success. Generated multiple leads and has begun her pursuit.

Week 2 – Jesse has made significant progress on her leads through to level 3 exposure. Begins to show some withdrawal behaviour, but is remedied by pairing her with another patient.

Week 3 – Days before completing her case, her mental health rapidly deteriorated after reaching level 5 exposure, which potentially suggests unsuitability for timeline transfer, but her high general mental ability should buffer against negative outcomes.

See attached timeline transfer request.

End of treatment 

I flip the next page to view the timeline transfer request.

**Timeline Transfer Request Form**

Name: Alex Cormier

Program status: Complete

New time and date: Day 21, Cycle 26

Governing Moderator: Viktor Nikiforov

* * *

Transfer status: Fail

Patient status: Deceased

Reason: Failure to integrate

I don’t understand any of this. What was Alex’s prize? My eyes rake over the word _deceased _several times like a scar. Surely Alex isn’t dead, is she? I flip through the files and I finally find what I’m looking for, Yuko’s file. I feel slightly uncomfortable reading through her personal information, but I need to know what happened to her.

**YUKO NISHIGORI NÉE TOYOMURA** **/Clementine **

Patient history:

Yuko is a patient struggling with the miscarriage of her stillborn triplets—post-partum depression. The patient has not undergone psychotherapy or prescription medication for her condition. A possible reason why she had not sought out therapy may be due to her social support resources (family and husband).

Program entry date: Day 18, Cycle 27/ latency, 1 week.

Assigned name: Clementine

Patient status: Purgatory

**PROGRESS SUMMARY**

Week 1 – Yuko shows great potential for completing program with high success. Generated a single lead with the help of another patient. Completed the week at level 2 exposure.

Week 2 – Yuko has made significant progress on her leads through to level 3 exposure. She shows some re-emergence, but it does not interfere with her functioning. 

Week 3 – Completed level 4 exposure without adverse impact. Draws heavily on social support from patients around her. There is a noticeable uptick of symptoms after patient (Yuuri Katsuki) was hospitalized and after another patient (Alex Cormier) left the program.

Week 4 – Yuko has achieved Level 5 exposure with stable mental condition.

See attached timeline transfer request.

End of treatment 

I flip the page and scan through the sheet.

**Timeline Transfer Request Form**

Name: Yuko Nishigori

Program status: Complete

New time and date: Day 1, Cycle 26

Governing Moderator: Viktor Nikiforov

* * *

Transfer status: Fail

Patient status: Deceased

Reason: Failure to integrate

_Deceased. _The word echoes in my head. I snap the file shut to not get any of my tears on the paper. I wipe my face with my sleeve. Yuko never mentioned anything about a husband or any children. This must be a mistake.

I shuffle through the rest of the files, until I see one with my name on it. I swallow the lump in my throat when my mouth goes dry.

**YUURI KATSUKI/Kikuyu**

Patient history:

Yuuri is a patient struggling with the grief of losing his family in a fire and treating a family member in distress—depression and PTSD. Patient has sought out therapy at the ███████ hospital and has been undergoing irregular treatment until program entry.

Program entry date: Day 20, Cycle 27/ latency, 2 weeks.

Assigned name: Kikuyu

Patient status: Purgatory

**PROGRESS SUMMARY**

Week 1 – Yuuri shows moderate potential for completing program with moderate success. Patient has not devoted sufficient time and effort into generating leads. Became side tracked with another patient (Yuko Nishigori).

Week 2 – Yuuri has made significant progress on obtaining leads after Moderator intervention. The patient has achieved level 2 exposure.

Week 3 – Patient has fallen ill with physical illness, but continues investigation. Has achieved level 4 exposure without adverse impact. **Questions the nature of the program, and may require closer monitoring. **

Week 4 – Patient maintains level 4 exposure, but experienced major adverse impact. **Significant Moderator intervention required to stabilize condition.** **May require closer supervision to prevent exploration into unauthorized areas.** Major concerns arise about re-emergent symptoms, but progress on track to finish.

I read my file again, confused when I see my name in place of Kikuyu’s. The patient history claims that I – not Kikuyu_—_ was the one who experienced the fire and the guilt. Surely, I am interpreting the file incorrectly, after all it is the middle of the night, and I just read everything twice over to let it all sink in. 

I read through the file a third time, pausing on every cluster of words, and going through all the possible meanings and interpretations. I wipe my sleeve at my eyes again. There are so many things wrong with my file.

_Significant Moderator intervention. _Viktor told me that he wasn’t acting as a moderator when he accompanied me through the forest and stayed with me by the ocean. He said that he enjoyed my company. I remember the blush on his ears when he told me that. It was so convincing. 

Perhaps our performance on the transfer is what determines a Moderator's prestige. So far, it looks bad for an allegedly _amazing_ Moderator such as himself. Both Alex and Yuko failed to do whatever it is he wanted them to do, and I’m next. Is he grooming me to make him look good? So I transfer well? If he makes me fall in love with him with _significant Moderator intervention_, I’ll do what he asks?

And it would have worked, I would be willing to do anything he asked.

_…require closer monitoring._ I breathe out a pained sigh. Does he think I’ll poke my nose into things I shouldn’t? After all, I grilled Chris and Viktor about their roles as Moderators. The ring feels heavy on my finger. I pause for a moment to consider that our relationship may serve to keep me close to him and away from things I shouldn’t be wandering into.

I regret becoming too attached to Viktor and opening up to him. I hate how I look forward to seeing him everyday. I bite my bottom lip to stop it from quivering. It doesn’t work. I put my file down to cry in peace.

…

I collect myself and formulate a plan. The ring is probably some sort of surveillance tool to keep me in check. I wonder if he already knows that I am in his office. If he does, I don’t want to stick around until morning to find out what my punishment will be. 

I shuffle through the other papers in my file. They’re hand written notes which are more in-depth than the weekly summaries. They’re oddly mundane. He writes about who I talk to, my mood, what I told him that day. None of them mention any of our romantic attachment. My heart aches a bit, I feel somewhat disappointed, not that it matters anymore.

The door of the building shuts softly behind me. I walk across the boardwalk back to the compound. It’s another hazy night, the roll of fog creeps on the water in the distance. The rage of the ocean endures.

Near the compound, I see the boathouse with the bobbing sailboats tied to the dock. If I stay here to complete the program, I will become “deceased” as well. If Alex or Yuko could not complete the transfer, I sure as Hell have no chance.

I grab my backpack from my room and load up on dry food and water from the mess hall. I eat as much as I can while I pack. My appetite is no where to be found, but I force myself to eat anyway. My pack is small, but between its pockets, I have enough food for two days, four if I try to stretch it out. Hopefully, I can find another source of food before I run out.

There are two paths which lead out of the town. One, I can take the single path on the east side of town at the end of the bus terminal. I’ll save time and energy if I wait until morning to take the bus, plus, I’m already quite sleepy, so I can rest before I leave. However, I’d be easily spotted if they were to ever come to look for me. There aren’t many places to hide in the great plains, and my dark clothes don’t blend well into the fair grass.

My other, riskier option is to leave by water. I’ll be unrestrained to any path, and I’ll have the cover of the fog. When they come look for me, they would never think to find me in the ocean. Even if they do, they won’t know which direction I sailed in. The water leaves no trails.

I rummage through the belongings in my room. I layer on an additional shirt, and I remove all the miscellaneous items that accumulated in my bag. A dry, reedy blade of grass from Yuko, the key to the clinic, the note from the young man at the bridge. I only take the bare essentials: my journal and pen, and two pairs of socks. The golden ring on my finger winks at me in the lamp light. I don’t want to be followed. I remove it, and place it in the drawer of the table, then turn off the lamp when I leave.

The boathouse is larger on the inside and doubles as a shed. Different types of equipment hang from the shelves mounted on the wall. I take the small fishing rod and a can of bait and cram them into the miniscule storage compartment of the largest sailboat tied to the dock, which is not very large at all. Both the fishing rod and my bag barely fit into the storage compartment, and I had to push the door shut before I can flip the flimsy latch to lock it in place. And even then, the door of the compartment bulges out.

I probably don’t need to use the motor because the wind is incessant, but I top up the fuel tank just to be safe. I swipe a compass from a workbench and tie the string to a loop on my pants, then I hoist the sails and navigate into the churning currents.

The town grows smaller behind me, but I look forward.

The compass waivers with every wave that splashes against the hull, and I eventually forgo it and sail toward the moon as it begins to set west. Even though my eyes and mind grow weary, my hands are deft as I adjust the rudder and sail. I don’t remember when I learned how to sail, but I don’t question it.

The boat enters a wall of fog so thick that I have trouble reading the wayward compass in front of me. A small drizzle quickly picks up into bullets of rain falling from the sky. My fingers turn bright red from the cold, and I briefly think of how easily Viktor's face flushes on the chilly morning walks. I can still turn back and beg for forgiveness. Surely, the time we shared together must have counted for something.

I steel my resolve. I will not be deluded by lies. I steer my boat deeper into the heart of the fog and try to forget.

The violence of the ocean picks up, jostling me against the short walls of the boat. The wind wails through the sail, tempting them to break free from my grasp. I can hardly see anything through the barrage of rain pelting into the side of my head. I hold the ropes tightly, but they turn slippery and burst out from my hold. I give up on fighting against the stormy gales. I won’t win against them. 

I brace myself tightly against the corner of the craft, watching helplessly as the sail flutters one way or the other on the turn of a dime. The ocean senses my intruding presence. The waves climb higher, the wind blows stronger until my craft skips over the tops of the waves in a terrifying display of pure chaos. I endure it with my eyes squeezed shut. My hands ache from clutching at the rails in a vice grip.

I stay like that for what feels like forever, my mind focuses on the singular goal of staying on the boat. The worst part is when the boat skids into the air. It feels like I’m falling off a cliff, which is equally terrifying as it is improbable.

The worst of the storm passes, and I can feel the waters level out into familiar crashes. I open my eyes to find the compartment door waving casually in the wind, open and empty. My food and equipment are gone, leaving me with only a useless wobbly compass, a name and a face. The surest of the three is the compass.

The disappointment is too much for me. I feel myself losing grip on my consciousness and my hands relax their clutch on the rails. I tie myself tightly to the railing and tuck my chin into my chest. I give into the tiredness haunting me, and let the waves rock me to sleep.

..

When I wake, it’s dark. Really dark.

For a second, I think I am dead, but I remain, still tied to the boat. I undo my ropes, and look around. There’s no fog, no clouds, no waves, no moon, and no wind. I’m sailing into an abyss. There is a trickle of light, but it seems to source from simultaneously no where and everywhere. I can hear nothing. It’s so quiet, and I don’t think I would mind staying here for eternity.

I dip my hand into the water to test if it is still water. My wet hand comes out of the ocean—if it could still be called an ocean. I use my compass to guide me, and even without the waves disturbing the reading, and the arrow turns lamely on the needle in every direction.

I turn the motor, and keep my hand on the rudder. My tiny boat propels through the great darkness, disturbing the mirrored surface in ripples.

The sound from the motor gradually takes on an echoic quality, as if I had turned into a cavern. A giant wave of light comes into view. It seems to be shaded behind an equally large looming wall. I navigate around the wall … and I cannot believe my eyes.

The moon is floating right over the water, casting an impossibly large reflection. I look away. The light is searing my eyes after being so comfortable in the darkness.

The moon casts crisp shadows everywhere. It seems to be attached to a large rod. And the moon isn’t even round. It’s flat like a disk, with light on one side, and nothing on the other. I have sailed into a hidden corner in the middle of the ocean. Walls extend infinitely above me into the darkness which even the moonlight cannot touch. There is a platform which extends up and out of the water. A rung ladder dots the side, serving as my ticket out.

I kill the engine and throw a rope onto a rung when I drift close enough to it. I secure the boat tightly to the ladder and take my first step.

I’m 50 or so rungs up. My sailboat is the size of a toy when I look down. I push the fear from my mind, more curious than fearful of the current situation. After climbing several more rungs, I hoist myself over the lip of the platform.

There are rails and yellow-black hazard stripes along the edge. Good to know whoever designed this place had safety in mind. The platform is small, and there’s a door.

_# 126. Moon & Sun Manual Override Controls, _read the blocky words on the door. I try the handle. It’s locked. A sensor similar to the one I saw outside of Viktor’s office is next to the handle. I bet all the possessions to my name that if I had Viktor’s key card, I would be able to enter. I bang my fist on the door, half hoping that someone would peek out to see what the commotion is, but no one does. I inspect the handle. It looks shiny, almost new, untouched, no signs of heavy use. There is no one in there and no one coming out. 

I sit with my legs dangling off the platform, my arms flung over the lower railing. I watch the body of water stretching endlessly beyond me.

My stomach growls.

I lay out my options. I can stay here and wait for someone to emerge from the other side, but I toss out the plan. There’s no telling whether anyone would come at all. And there’s no food here.

I can sail back to the town, but I barely survived the storm and I have no way of telling which direction I should sail.

My stomach growls again.

I’m not_ that_ hungry, I tell myself.

I decide to wait on the platform, at least for a while. I zip my jacket up to my chin, and lean against the door, so that I would know if anyone tries to go in or out. I cross my arms, and doze off.

..

I wake up in the same position as I had fallen asleep in. I feel fully rested, but now there’s a pit in my stomach when I see the moon high on the far side of the sky. I bang on the door again and wait a few moments, but there is nothing.

I descend down the ladder and untether the boat from the rung. I tie myself to the railings again, and flip the motor, following the moon to navigate back east.

It’s only me through the darkness for eons.

…

A whisper of wind blows through my hair. There is fog simmering on the water surface, and I direct the boat towards it. The watery fog thickens until I am completely enveloped. The water is placid as a tide pool, a striking difference from the earlier storm. It’s silent too, only the steady hum of the motor, and water splashing gently at the sides of the boat.

After I enter the fog, I lose all sense of direction. The compass dangling from my waist might as well be junk metal. The only thing that prevents me from throwing it to the depths is a sliver of hope that it will spontaneously start working again. I flick at the glass, but the needle just spins around in nonsensical circles. I maintain my rudder at the same angle to keep on an easterly direction. Hopefully, if I’m lucky, I’ll see the rocky beach of the town again.

My mind wanders from thought to thought, wearing thin from the boredom. At least in the storm, there was something to do.

By now, someone must have realized that I am missing. I should have been gone for about two days. Last time I got lost in the backwater streets, they formed a search party. Maybe I can lie and pass off my absence as a strange misadventure. It’s believable given how often I find myself in far flung places. 

However, that’s not an option. If they caught me, I would be forced to solve the mystery, leading to my inevitable and fatal ‘transfer’, or something worse.

A better choice would be to hide out in another town and wait until everyone has completed their program. They would assume that I am dead, and I’d walk away free as a dead man. I chuckle bitterly to myself. I’d be freer dead than alive.

I like the sound of this plan and this bolsters my spirits and makes my return to the town seem less bleak. Of course, I would need to return to the dormitory, steal someone’s backpack and recoup more food. I entertain the idea of stealing Viktor’s card key, but that’s too dangerous. I don’t want to see him again.

I can’t tell if I feel more hurt or angry. I tell myself I’m angry at him. I wonder if he committed any other ‘Moderator interventions’ for other participants under the guise of friendship or otherwise. I sigh, of course he did, this is his job.

A tiny light blinks in the fog, forcing beams through the mist. For a moment, I thought it is the moon, then I realize it is the lighthouse.

The motor faithfully putts toward the light. The red outline of the lighthouse grows stronger and clearer as I break out from the fog. From what I remember, only the boathouse has a suitable dock clear of obstructions. If I were to dock the sailboat anywhere else, I would risk crashing into the rocky bottom of the shore. There are no patrols on the shore or on the roads, no one yelling for my name or PA system announcing a lost person. I sit back in relief. No one noticed that I was gone. 

I kill the engine when I approach the boathouse, using the remaining momentum to glide into the open shed. Everything is how I left it when I departed, except there is someone emerging from a sleeping bag underneath the bench. I panic, quickly tying the dock line, and stepping out of the teetering boat as fast as I can without falling. But of course, I trip over my feet and fall over. 

The person steps towards me and hoists me up before gripping me in a hug. Their face presses against my neck, I can feel their chilly nose on my skin. I feel something cold and wet on their face, like they have been crying. They pull back, just barely, and I am face-to-face with Viktor. His hair is mussed up and his trench coat is crumpled and wrinkly.

He looks at me with red and tired eyes and cups one side of my face with his hand. “You came back to me” he says in relief.

Before I turn him away, he presses his mouth to mine. It’s different this time. Far from the usual polite peck. He kisses me like I’m his last gasp of air, desperate and rough as he breathes in deep.

We part. His eyes are on my lips watching them hungrily, but his eyes flick up to meet mine. His stare shoots a chill through me, and he closes his eyes again, and kisses me slow and hard. His lips move against mine, forcibly parting them with his tongue when he seeks out mine.

He holds me harder and harder until it hurts. I break away to tell him this, and he stops. We’re both panting and out of breath.

“Yuuri,” he says when he reaches for me, but I maintain a distance.

He takes a ring from his pocket—the ring he gave me, the one I left behind. “You forgot this,” he says with a pained smile, holding up the gold ring. He approaches me slowly and takes my hand, then slides it on my finger again. 

I easily slide it off, and he takes the ring and replaces it on my finger even as he begins to cry.

“Viktor, I read my file,” I say to him, pocketing the ring. “I read _all _the files. I know that Yuko and Alex died after they solved their mystery. You’re manipulating me with your affection. I’m a flight risk and I ask too many questions. If you bind me to you, I’ll stay here and solve the mystery to make you look good. I know that it is your job as a Moderator.” I look him in the eye. “But what I can’t figure out is why you push me to finish even though I only have a moderate rate of success and when you have concerns about my mental health. Does maintaining your good reputation as a Moderator mean that much to you? Even if it means that I fail?”

I barely recognize him as the cool and collected Moderator he appears to everyone. Viktor is hysterical with tears as a hand covers his mouth to quiet the sobbing. He shakes his head vehemently, denying my accusations. He tries to calm himself down, his breath is shaky when he talks. “I may have lied to you about some aspects of the program,” he clutches onto me, “please, Yuuri, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I love you more than anything—”

The door to the boathouse swings open, admitting two people in blue suits. Viktor wedges himself between them and myself.

“Moderator Nikiforov, step away from the participant,” says one of them.

“No, he’s still under my jurisdiction.” His voice is still rough from crying. “He’s not phasing yet, you can’t take him.”

They look at him impassively, then easily push him aside in his current state. The last thing I feel before I hit the ground is a sharp pinch on my neck. It doesn’t hurt, but I curl up on my side. My body turns heavy as sand, and each moment I spend awake is difficult.

“That was completely unnecessary,” says Viktor, darting to where I lie. He looms over me, pushing the hair from my face. I blink slowly. I try to raise my head, but my neck feels like jelly. I can feel him rummaging into my pocket, and he’s fumbling with something. I sink a little bit deeper; my vision blurs and dims.

They warn him again to get away from me, they say his last name again. I feel the cool slide of metal on my finger, then my hand falls limply to the ground.

There’s a scuffle, feet scrape against the wooden floor and there’s grunting and rattling. Something liquid gets knocked over, and then they stop. There’s clicking and heavy breathing.

They’re talking about me. I follow the thread of conversation through knots, trying to figure out what the words mean, but I get distracted. I catch bits of conversation like passing through radio stations, everything else is white noise.

“…A memory wipe…”

“No, absolutely no memory wipe,” says Viktor. “… don’t want…suffer...”

I sink deeper; the voices in the room are long and distant. They talk at the far end of a long tunnel, echoing off the walls of my mind. I tell them to stop, but it comes out as an unintelligible grunt. 

“…office, and on platform 126…” someone says, voice barely audible, the words lost in its own reverberation.

There is a new voice that sounds like it’s gurgling underwater. “Vitya… too liberal... interfering… Moderator.”

Then Viktor's voice cuts through as a sunbeam cuts into the water. Beautiful and diffuse. “If you wipe his memory, I swear on my parents’ grave, I will resign on the spot.”

I completely sink into the wooden floorboards of the boathouse, into the water, and melt through the cracks of the ocean bed, falling deeper and deeper into the dark depths. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey readers,
> 
> Ready to see how this all ends? 
> 
> I'd like to remind you that the Death tag comes into full effect in this chapter. 
> 
> Here's the music playlist to go with the story, if you're into it: https://bit.ly/2MPnZ2S

I’m somewhere soft. My hand gingerly feels the sore spot on my neck where a bandage sticks to my skin.

“So Sleeping Beauty finally wakes.”

Someone is sitting at a desk, he’s talking to me, but I can’t focus long enough to piece everything together. I try to open my eyes, and I regret my decision instantly when the light stabs into my eyes. A web of pain sticks and throbs at the forefront of my face. The last time I felt this tired was when I pulled triple shifts, back-to-back. What was my job again? Another throb of pain. I smooth my hand over my face, massaging my eyes.

I give myself a moment to allow the snow globe in my head to settle. The voice of the other person drones on. I’m still trying to make sense of what they’re saying. Come on Yuuri, focus. It shouldn’t be this hard.

The person helps prop me up on the bed. There is the cool, smooth press of a cup to my lips and I reflexively start drinking. Finally, some relief I didn’t know I needed. I gulp too fast and end up choking violently, sending a fan of spittle from my lips. I gulp in the air, trying not to choke. I cough again, clearing the water out of my lungs. I try a shaky breath, more coughing.

I don’t know if that was the intended effect, but it sobered me up.

I look around me. I’m in my room. Chris sits cross legged on my chair. His face is blurry, but he does not seem pleased to see me. I reach for the glasses at the side of the table.

He breathes out a sigh of what can only be pity and annoyance as he wipes off his wet glasses. I sit there silently, as he perches his glasses back on his nose. 

“Now, as I was saying…” He begins lecturing me about my behaviour. He says that I’m on house arrest which means I can’t leave the dormitory. I should consider myself lucky that I’m still in the program despite how many rules I’ve broken, and that Viktor is out there trying to fix the mess I’ve made.

He paces while he talks, occasionally throwing his hands up in exasperation, shaken-up and ready to burst. A strange anger builds inside me as I bear his lecture. Being condemned to die in a strange mystery novel is not lucky at all. I’m only sorry I got caught. 

Somehow, someone managed to get the ring back on my finger. Annoyed, I slip it off.

“If you ever want to see him again you better keep that thing on,” says Chris. He looms imperiously over me. 

Defiant, I lean forward to place the ring on my desk, ignoring his warning.

“Are you mad?” He clutches the sides of his face.

If I weren’t so tired, I might have found this more comical than histrionic. 

“Maybe I don’t want to see Viktor again,” I bite out. There is an unusual edge to my voice, feeling more upset than angry. 

“No. No, no, no,” says Chris. “Don’t you _dare_ utter those words. He’d cry. He loves you so much, because _I would know_.” Veins, bright red and angry lined his tired eyes. “You’re the only person he _ever _talks about. Do you know that? Do you even understand?” 

When I don’t respond, he sits back into the chair, sighing. “Of course not,” he mutters. 

“No, he’s manipulating me,” I say to him.

Chris spits out an incredulous, “What? That’s absurd. Look,” the gold ring rolls between his fingers, “he didn’t give you his parents’ wedding ring just to be manipulative. Um, I mean, there’s the case of my ex-boyfriend, but that’s a whole other issue.” He puts the ring in the palm of my hand. “I’ve only known Viktor for six months, but I know he is a good person. He wouldn’t try to play tricks on you like that.” He pauses, “he’s more fragile than you think.”

“But, I read my file. He lied to me about spending time with me outside of being a Moderator. I know the truth.”

“You did WHAT?” Chris’ eyes seem ready to pop out of his head. “_Oh my goodness_, h-how? What? Okay, that’s beside the point. As Moderators, we’re not allowed to have relationships with the participants, but seeing how smitten he is, he probably got around that by writing off the interactions as official business.”

I can’t bring myself to believe him, but also, I don’t completely doubt him. At what point do lies become truths and truths become lies? I look out the window. The horizon blurs into the ocean. Grey upon grey. 

The ring sits firmly in my hand. Did this ring belong to his mother or father? It feels wrong to keep it.

Chris speaks again, in a softer voice this time. He tells me that I should keep working on my mystery as much as I can from the confines of the dormitory. When I ask him about the transfer papers, he tells me that is a question for Viktor, who will come see me at the end of the day for the official debriefing. He leaves me in my room for a moment, then comes back with a tray of food from the mess hall. He gestures pointedly to the ring on the table before he leaves.

I sit at my desk, trying to section the eggplant parmesan with the knife. I eventually give up and eat with my hands, biting off tough spongy pieces.

House arrest means that I can’t go to the mess hall to return my tray, or so the receptionist reminds me when I try to leave. I give her the tray. Her thin puckered lips tremble slightly as she looks over me like a ghost out of the mist.

“Can I borrow the phone,” I ask to interrupt her staring. Numbly nodding her head, she hands me the phone and I call the blond boy from the other day.

The other line picks up on the third ring. I introduce myself, he clears his throat. I tell him that I’m the guy from the bridge and I wanted to talk to him about Kikuyu and his grandfather.

“What do you want to know?” the boy asks.

“Everything. Start from the top,” I say, with a borrowed pen and paper at hand. 

“My grandpa and Kikuyu found each other at the right time in their lives. My grandpa managed a bookstore in town, right next to the hearing clinic. My grandpa worked there all his life until his back got worse, and he worked in the bookstore less and less. One day, he just stopped and spent his whole day fishing. At first we, uh, my family, we were happy that he was taking a break, but then he would do nothing but fish. Sometimes, he wouldn’t come home until the middle of the night. He’d come home like a zombie, refusing to say more than a few words to anyone.”

“No one said anything, but we were growing concerned that he was um… Anyway, one night at dinner, he told us he had an interesting conversation with Kikuyu next door, since then, they became really close, like inseparable. He even invited him to eat dinner several times. Kikuyu hooked up my grandpa with a chiropractor, and his back improved and it was like he was back to being my grandpa.”

“They planned for a fishing trip to a secret fishing location where he hides his best whisky and vodka. Not even I know where his fishing location is, and I’m his favourite grandson. A few days before they planned to leave, my grandpa had a heart attack in the middle of dinner. Kikuyu was there and he was a doctor, so he tried his best to save him. We rushed him to the hospital, but it was already too late.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say quietly.

“I was actually rushing to the funeral the day we met,” he says. “I thought you were Kikuyu. He was supposed to do a eulogy, but he never showed up to the planning session, or the funeral.”

“When was the planning session?” I ask.

“It was a while ago, maybe almost a month and a half? I even bumped into Kikuyu on my way there. He was sitting in the same place you were sitting. That day, he said that he needed a moment.”

The pieces fall into place when I suddenly realize that the boy was probably the last person to talk to Kikuyu before he disappeared. “What did you two talk about?”

“Um, nothing really. He was in their usual spot on the bridge. He had this weird look in his eye, like he was sick. I asked him what’s wrong, but he reassured me that everything was okay, and that he’ll show up soon—which he never did— and he needed a moment to think about some stuff.”

“Do you know where he is?” I ask.

“Um, I dunno. Skipping town because he got some girl pregnant?” he says. “I don’t think the rumours are true, he doesn’t seem like the type to do that.”

I spend the rest of my day helping the receptionist with her paperwork. Not much more I can do while I’m on house arrest. I ask her about the program the Moderators manage, but she’s tight lipped as everyone else. I tried to be clever. I repackaged my questions in a subtler way, hoping that maybe something will strike, but she does not give. Not even an inch. The most I get out of her is a non-committal grunt, neither confirming nor denying.

The front door opens, and the receptionist sighs in relief, briefly relaxing her stony face.

“I think you need to talk to Viktor,” she says, finally able to pass me off to someone else.

The other participants trickle in, asking me where I have been for the last two days. I tell them the line I had been rehearsing in my head, “I got lost exploring.” They all laugh, joking around. Fortunately, they all bought it, except Viktor who watches me with a tired expression from the far side of the room, waiting for everyone to leave me alone.

“Okay, Yuuri needs his rest,” Viktor tells them, breaking up the circle of people that formed around me.

He follows me to my room, and he sits in the chair, leaving me to sit on my bed. He finds the ring on the table and looks up at me, frowning his pursed lips. He blinks quickly before turning away.

Silent as a whisper, he excuses himself from the room, then comes back in and sits on the chair. A clipboard that I didn’t notice him carrying now rests on his lap. “This is a debriefing meeting for the past three days.” He rubs some invisible dust from his eye, and he clears his throat a few times. “I’m going to ask you a couple of questions and I want you to answer them as honestly as possible.”

He is as calm and collected as I remember him. The memory of him as the man in the boat house who cried frantically for me seemed like it happened in a different world, to someone else.

I nod.

“Do you remember what you did in my office two days ago?” He reads off his clipboard.

“Yes.”

I watch him check off ‘no’.

“Do you know what a Timeline Transfer Request Form is used for?”

I ponder the question. I’ve seen it, but I don’t know its purpose. “No.”

He checks off ‘no’.

“Do you remember platform 126?” He quickly wipes away something from his eye.

“Yes. It said Moon and Sun Manual Override Controls.”

He checks off ‘No’ and writes in _N.A._ on the lines below it.

“That’s not my response.”

He continues, ignoring my comment. “What made you leave the town?”

“I left because if I solve the mystery, I will die, like Yuko and Alex.”

He writes, _I don’t know_. The ink on the page bleeds when a tear falls to the page.

Viktor has a hand over his mouth, muffling laughter.

No, it’s crying. He clears his throat before he asks me the next question. “You were knocked out when you returned to the boathouse. Do you remember any conversation before you passed out?”

“Yes, there were two people in blue suits, they said something about a memory wipe. Then someone else came into the shed and told you were being too liberal, and—”

He cuts me off. He checks off ‘No’ and writes _N.A._ in neat handwriting. More tears fall on the page.

He looks up at me. His face is shining with trails of moisture. His face is blotchy and red. I stare at him, waiting for his next question.

A part of me wants to rip away the clipboard and hold him close so I can provide him with the comfort that he gave me when I was sick in the forest or when I was in a daze by the ocean. It’s hard to watch him like this.

“Do you love me?”

My eyes flit down at the page, and there are no more questions after the boathouse inquiry. He clutches the clipboard to his chest when he catches me craning my neck to read the sheet.

“Answer the question,” he demands firmly.

_Yes. _I wanted to say, but how much of a fool would I be to say that? Easily deluded, easily manipulated. _That’s how it’s done boys and girls_, he would say as he presents me as his next case study to the new class of Moderators. And I want it. I want whatever lie he gives to me.

I look out the window, then at the door, anywhere except where he sat in front of me. I feel cowardly avoiding his gaze, not wanting to admit how I feel. The pause becomes a long silence, weighty and oppressive, casting insincerity on anything that comes out of my mouth.

His façade of firmness falls apart, disintegrating into absolute devastation. Tears bud at his eyes, flowing freely as rivers. My heart crumples into itself, knowing that I have the capacity to induce such a forlorn expression on his face. 

“Do you love me?” I ask, throwing the question back at him. “I’ve never done anything for you.”

“Do I need a reason to fall in love with you?” he asks back, covering his face with a hand, wiping his eyes again. “Yuuri, I read your file. You bring light to everyone’s life, including mine. You’re kind and sweet, smart and caring, and vulnerable,” he says between breaths. “My love, and life.” Then he slows. His voice is frighteningly tender and sincere. “How could I not fall in love with you?”

I’m taken aback by his force of conviction. He says them without hesitation, and for a brief moment, I believe him.

“Do you really love me?” I ask, sincerely reaching out to hold his hand in mine.

His terse face loosens into a wobbly smile, the tension falls from his shoulders and he looks at me as if I were asking a silly question.

“Don’t even ask me that,” says Viktor, pressing kisses to my palms. He hugs me, reassuring and tight.

We both tip over and fall into the bed. His face presses against my neck, still sniffling. We stay like this for long moments. His once erratic breath slows to something calmer. His thumb smooths my cheek, like counting rosary beads. Instead of prayers, he whispers my name.

“Am I going to die?” I feel my own voice waiver when the question slips out. “I already know that the transfer will kill me when I solve the mystery. I’m not smart like Alex, or sociable like Yuko. I’m just me!” I blurt out, answering my own question.

He props himself up and pulls me close to him until both our heads rest on the pillow. “You are enough.” He studies my eyes, vacillating between the two, like he doesn’t know which one he likes more. “I can’t tell you what happens after. You already got a small glimpse of it when you snuck into my office.” He pauses, “you really shouldn’t have done that.”

He entangles our fingers together then pulls them apart. The skin around his eyes is still tinged pink. There’s a faint hint of freckles from a sunnier time, but those days have long faded. “However, I’ll tell you this, I can’t guarantee your success. Only you can do that, but I am certain that _nothing_ can shake my faith in you. I know you can do it, so please, find Kikuyu and solve the mystery.”

“Am I Kikuyu?” I ask, thinking back to the file I read in his office.

“Don’t worry about that,” he says. “Just keep on doing what you’re doing.”

There it is. He’s trying to convince me to finish the mystery without explanation. My guard is up again, and he tries to bring it down, “how do I convince you that I am not lying to you, that I love you?” He tucks a stray strand of hair behind his ear. “Tell me, what do I have to do?”

I’m pressed down by him, he cages his arms around me, sliding our clothed bodies close together. I’m acutely aware that we’re a bed. For a man of mystery, I feel like I can see right through him. His naivety in love is almost proof enough, but I need something tangible.

“Give me your card key,” I say, calling his bluff. 

I was sure he would refuse. He does hesitate, but only for a second. My eyes widen when he reaches into his pocket, and removes what I requested from the sparse key ring. I didn’t expect him to concede so easily or quickly.

He folds the key card into my palm. “That opens all the access ports. The key is tied to my name, so don’t get me into too much trouble, okay?” he looks at me. “And there’s not much out there, at the fringes. Most of the interesting stuff is in town.” He swallows, showing his fraying nerves. The next words come out stilted, falling clumsily from his mouth, “so don’t try to leave me… again.”

“How do you know I’m not manipulating you?” I ask him. “How do you know that I won’t upend this whole program and cause a riot with the other participants? You’re blindly trusting me.”

“I told you, nothing can shake my faith in you,” he says, stroking my cheek with a serene look on his face. “I know you’re trying to make sense of this, and you make mistakes sometimes. If my key card is what it takes for you to believe me, then I will gladly give it to you. Although, I thought you'd ask me to show you my love in other ways,” he laughs, still stroking my cheek. “I know you wouldn’t deliberately hurt me, even if you are a little selfish sometimes.” He smiles at me warmly, thawing the final threads of doubt holding me back.

He reaches over me to the desk, and retrieves the ring, “I’m sorry I didn’t ask you the first time, or the second time. I just thought that we were close enough, but I guess you still had reservations.” He looks at me imploringly, vulnerability clouding his face.

The gravity of those words don’t match that of a simple good luck charm, but I can’t stand to see him cry over me again, and I hug him before he finishes his sentence, “yes.” I nod and offer him my hand. I don’t fully understand why he is so persistent about this. It seems awfully important to him, so I let him slide it on my finger.

“It’s for good luck,” he insists, when he kisses my hand.

Our eyes meet in mutual understanding, or more appropriately, in mutual deception— we both know it means something deeper than that.

I catch a glimpse of it again, the hesitation of a love once spurned. The bed creaks as he inches closer to me, fearing that if he moved too fast, I’d startle and skitter away. Well, that’s not completely false, but I try to meet him half way.

It starts with his touch on my neck. His slender fingers at my nape. He smells of the ocean, not that it has a smell, but I grew to associate his comforting scent with the ocean when we spent many wordless nights observing the waves.

I open up to him. He is the warmth in the ersatz sunlight, the salt of the earth missing in the spray. All the best parts absent from this world, I find in him. We breathe together, in concert.

Kisses fall on my face and hair, feeling more paternal than romantic. He kisses me like a new born babe, every inch is soft, every spot smells of gentle skin. There’s a pause. He holds me in his gaze. His heat feels foreign against my body. I can’t remember a time when I’ve felt so warm and loved.

“I’m not forcing you to do anything you don’t want, right?” he whispers.

I don’t understand why he’s whispering. “I’m okay with this,” I say to him. I hold a hand to his cheek, touching him with a lover’s fondness. He melts, and I realize how much he needs me too. I have been selfish, sparing crumbs of myself to him, only when it is convenient to me.

“I love it when you touch me,” he says, cupping my hand in his. 

Now I’m the one kissing him, hoping that he will find comfort in me, the way I find it in him. His breathing becomes laboured and heavy with each touch on his skin until he’s glowing pink.

He asks to stay the night and borrow my shower. I rummage for the same pair of pajama pants he wore the other night and hand it to him. He comes out of the bathroom, hair wet at the tips. Then it is my turn to wash.

When I return to the bedroom, he’s sitting on my bed, lost in thought. He looks up to me and smiles, patting the spot beside him. He takes off my glasses, and rests them on the table. Then he turns off the lights.

The days are becoming shorter, the sun has already set a long time ago, but a thin light still filters through the window, suggesting only the outline of Viktor when he climbs back to bed beside me.

It’s been a while since I’ve been with another man. The memory doesn’t come to me, yet I shiver with what my body remembers.

He spoons me close from behind and lays an arm around my waist, then pulls the covers up and whispers goodnight to me.

I lay there, waiting for while. I tug his hand closer to me to prompt something, but it only gets me a nuzzle into my hair and my name whispered back to me in a sleepy voice. I count off his breaths like sheep until I find myself drifting off as well.

…

I wake in the middle of the night. There is a small break in the clouds. The moon is a perfect eye peering into my room, flooding it in the milky light. Viktor lays on my bed with his hair tousled over his face, lost to the embrace of sleep.

The key card is stark white against the table. I inspect it, holding it to the moonlight. It’s a smooth and featureless rectangle, curved at the corners.

I tuck the card into Viktor’s jacket pocket. Whether the card is real or not, there’s nothing more for him to prove. I had already resigned myself to what I already knew. I love him, and if that makes me a fool, so be it. 

I dim the window until it’s dark.

I feel my way back to the bed. There are only so many things my foot could make contact with, my chair is one of them. It scrapes loudly on the floor, then it is silent again. Viktor stirs in my bed. I can hear soft patting sounds as he searches for me in the dark.

“Yuuri?” he whispers, sounding a little lost.

“I’m right here,” I say, sinking into the bed. “I just got up to dim the window.”

I settle against him. He pecks a kiss to my neck.

My heart patters in my chest. I will myself to sleep, but my thoughts drift back to him. At my silent admission of love, I feel beholden to show him how I feel about him. With him so close, it would only take the slip of a hand.

I reach back to feel his face. When I find his mouth, I try my best to kiss him. In the dark, I feel braver, and slip him my tongue. The reaction is instantaneous in the sudden stillness that arrests him. I call his name after I gently lick the curved seam of his lip. And like magic, it brings him back to me. His hand around my waist winds tighter around me, as if it is too late to change my mind.

I palm myself through my thin pajamas, feeling how hard I have grown. I moan his name into his mouth, stuttering my breath when I feel his hand take over. We’re crossing some invisible line, and I revel in the excitement, that Viktor desires me like this. He touches me, nice and slow, mouthing kisses on my neck between lines of a foreign language whispered into my ear. His voice is gravelly and deep, nothing like the chirpy persona he puts on when he’s working. When I come close, he ramps down to a crawling pace to make this last.

It’s not long before I feel him pressing against my thigh. I turn around to face him, reaching down so I can touch him too. He’s so hot in my hand, and I give it a few tugs to make him tremble. I wish the lights were on so I can see his face when he makes those soft sounds that bring me pleasure. 

The weight of the bed shifts until I can feel him on top of me. He rolls his hips into mine, grinding me into the mattress. My face is warming up from the delicious friction and the slick sounds filling the room, and soon I hear him breathing harder when I help him rub us together.

His mouth finds my neck, and I feel the familiar sensation again, his mouth hot on the underside of my jaw, sucking bruises. I pull him up to my lips in a searing kiss before he leaves a mark on me. Our mouths twist into each other until there is a wet heat, leaving us both leaking and sensitive.

He works us both with his hand, stroking frantically. The hard impression of the ring on his finger rubs against my cock, reassuring me that he’s mine, and that I am his. If there’s anything that comes out of this wretched island, it will be him. If I can hold him tight, then that’s enough for me. I feel him hitching his breath for air in the tiny room. His thighs quiver and he quietly moans my name into my shoulder, over and over as he spills himself on my stomach. He collapses on top of me, heavy with contentment.

His fingers dance along me, teasing at my sensitivity. I squirm, and I wrap my hands around myself to finish. I get in a few slick pulls, before I feel a hand pulling on my wrist. He entwines our fingers again and holds it to the blanket, leaving me confused. Does he not want me to come? My eyes search for any expression in the dark to give me a clue to what he’s doing. Without my glasses, I haven’t got the slightest inkling. I’m at his mercy.

I can feel he’s looming over me, but I can’t tell what he’s doing… I hear wet sounds squishing against flesh. He’s moaning, louder than I am comfortable with. Hopefully, my neighbours are fast asleep, after all, it’s the middle of the night. He touches the cum cooling on my stomach and pinches the wetness at the head of my cock, then his hand retreats again. The wet sounds return, slicker than ever. It becomes apparent that he is pleasuring himself in the dark. My arousal thickens at the thought of how much I want to join him.

He guides my hand up to his mouth where I can feel him kiss my ring. He takes two of my fingers into his moaning mouth, swirling and sucking his tongue around them, coating them with his saliva.

He removes me from his mouth then guides them back, until they press against something warm and wet, and puckered. I hesitate, but Viktor kisses me sweetly on the cheek while his hand coaxes me inside him, and then, he pushes me deeper until my fingers are buried in him. “That’s it my love, open me up for you,” he whispers with a trembling voice to my ear. He keeps his hand over mine, showing me how to please him until he’s hot and loose. Something dribbles out of him, which I assume is where the cum went.

He wraps an arm around my neck, pressing open mouthed kisses against me. His breath comes out, unfocused and erratic. He pushes my fingers out of the way and blindly feels for me, lining us up, before sinking down onto me slowly.

The air is knocked out of my lungs and I need a moment to recover from the tightness, but he starts rocking against me. He whimpers between short huffs of breath. I’m hurtling toward the edge of orgasm, I won’t last very long in his heat, sucking me in with obscene squelching.

He’s tightening around me, harder and harder, until my own orgasm is cleaved out of me. I jerk my hips against him, pumping him full of my spend. I groan openly into the otherwise silent room, perhaps too loudly. I try to catch my breath, winded from the release, but I whimper when he doesn’t leave me, instead, he grows tighter around my softening cock. “Just a little bit longer,” he pleads, and continues rocking me into him more violently than ever, his hard cock thumping against my stomach, stamping it with a wet slap each time he comes down.

I feel the crest of another orgasm pulling deep inside me. It’s stronger, and bigger than the first one, banking on the heightened sensitivity left over by the ravages of my first. I fist my hands into the bedsheets, curl my toes, and press my legs together, anything to keep my orgasm from coming, to please Viktor. I want to see his face so badly, how pink he must be from exertion, or how I can only see my reflection in his eyes.

I’m surprised by a kiss, needy and desperate, and in complete disarray. I welcome his tongue, anything to distract me from my bursting orgasm. His hands tangle into my sweaty hair, pressing our foreheads together. His eyelashes flutter against the tops of my cheeks. Even, in the darkness, I can feel his close gaze on me, and I return it. I see the man I love in front of me.

I can no longer keep my orgasm away, it’s too hot to hold, and I let it break through me, driving my hips deep into him to meet his every grind. He suddenly tightens, spasms shake his body. We climax together in perfect union, holding each other as our tired bodies tremble in hot, awaited release. His body feels limp, resting on top of mine, the tension completely strung out.

I pull myself out of him, feeling a trail of cum ooze onto my leg. 

Our breaths slowly fall out of sync, and he wraps me in his arms to capture my mouth in several long kisses. I think of our future together before I fall asleep in his arms.

**

“Back to the bridge huh?” asks the bus driver.

The bus is rickety and empty as usual when it makes its 5th trip of the day back and forth between the terminals on opposite sides of the town. It’s already the middle of the afternoon. I would have been out earlier if Viktor woke me up when everyone else walked to town. Instead, he left me to sleep-in until he can double back to the dormitories to pull me in for another round of…

Except in the morning, I was on my belly, getting rammed into the mattress until I was wrung dry. I shiver as I remember him whisper into my ear that no one will be around to hear my impassioned moans. 

After an exorbitantly long shower together, we walked back to the town, hand in hand with no one to observe us. He kissed me deliciously before we parted ways in town.

“Hello?” calls the bus driver.

I vigorously nodded my head, “yea, I’m going back to the bridge.”

“You’re spacier than usual today. Daydreaming about a girl?” He wiggles his eyebrows at me.

I blush at his uncannily accurate guess, “um, it’s a guy. The same guy who gave me this ring.”

He throws his head back in laughter. For a moment, I am concerned that he would drive us into a ditch, but his hands remain steady. He could probably drive this route forward and backward with his eyes blindfolded.

“Took you long enough to come around,” he says to me. “ ‘Good luck charm’ my ass,” he scoffs. “Poor guy’s probably so in love with you that he didn’t even know where to begin.”

I hop off on my stop, and walk to the bridge. I approach the empty bench, disappointed that Kikuyu hadn’t returned to his usual roost.

I look over the edge and a sudden feeling of dread pours into me. It’s a very steep drop until the rushing river below. I wonder how Nicholai could ever manage to catch a fish under these conditions.

A few people walk through the bridge, and I watch the day go by, reminiscing about my wonderful evening last night. Then something catches my eye between the railings of the bridge. Down by the river, there’s a small troupe of people holding fishing gear, walking along the river bank. They seem like they would know where a secret fishing hole might be hiding. I wave to them, yelling _hello. _They all look up, and stop to wave back at me, then proceed along.

I run off the bridge, and along the tall sides of the river until I see a small footpath leading down into the canyon. Small dry branches swat at my face, but I don’t care when my chances of finding Kiyuku are slipping through my fingers. I can hear the roar of the river through the weave of trees, growing louder until the full loudness of the water hits me after I clear the brush.

The white rapids are frighteningly torrential. A giant, singular muscle, threatening to push through anything along its path. I doubt Nicholai was fishing for fish, nothing would be able to fight against these waters.

I walk in the direction of the troupe of men. Like most things on the island, the river bank is rocky and slippery, leaving my sneakers soaked through. There is nothing I can hear beyond the rush of water except the occasional bird call echoing off the cavernous walls flanking both sides. I bide my time. There is only one direction for the men to walk, and it’s only a matter of persistence until I bump into them. The sky grows slightly darker, I better hurry up or else I will miss the bus tonight.

As I walk along the bank, the water simmers down to a smaller, less chaotic stream. The water is clear and there are mud-coloured fish zipping under the surface. There’s a yell not too far from where I am, and it snaps me out of my daze staring at the river.

The men are propped all along a spot under a giant wooden tree with barren branches. In the summer time, this would be an excellent spot with the shade of the foliage. Some of them are in tall rubber overalls, standing in the river, but most of them sit on rocks for makeshift chairs.

I ask them if they know of a special fishing spot with liquor. They laugh at me.

“If we knew of a place, why would we tell ya?” asks a particularly rotund man. “But really, there are nice fishing spots all along this river. It all really depends on how long your feet can take these goddamn rocks before collapsing from exhaustion.”

He points out that the river pools into the marsh, but there are no fish in the marsh, so the sweet spot should be right before it the river ends. The only caveat is that it’s difficult to access without sinking a day into walking.

The trudge back up to the mountain is much more difficult than I anticipate, especially in soaking wet shoes which squish with water with every step. I leave a wet trail of footprints on the paved ground behind me as I walk to the bus stop for the return trip home. The sun is already setting behind the horizon when I climb upon the waiting bus.

**

The next morning, I get up first, trying my best to untangle from Viktor's sleepy grasp. I scrub myself thoroughly, taking care to remove all of Viktor’s cum when it leaks out of me, a cheeky reminder of the full press of him inside me last night. I finger myself, still well loved and a little sore, but I am clean and ready for the day.

I wake Viktor with a kiss. Actually, I kiss him multiple times before he wakes, but it becomes apparent that he’s pretending to be asleep. He pulls me down to the bed so he has me in his arms. “If it were up to me, we would be in bed all day,” he says snuggling me.

We arrive to breakfast, and silently eat our food. I notice two other people missing from the group.

“Did they also win the ‘prize’?” I ask him.

The smile falls from his face when he answers. “Yes, they did.”

“Did they successfully transfer—” He presses his hand to my mouth, and a finger over his lips. I back away from his hand and eat the browning fruit on my plate without another word. He looks at me apologetic, but I reach out to hold his hand to reassure him that I’m not upset, but a thousand doubts still simmer in me about the nature of my predicament.

I question whether it is the right choice to trust him like this. To have complete and utter surety in this man who I have barely known for a month. To be blinded by the brightness of our growing love. Or am I just a fool leaping off a cliff in blind faith that he will be there to catch me at the bottom?

He squeezes my hand and traces my ring with his thumb. I give him a small smile.

We walk into town with the thinning group of participants. I was about to go off on my own way when Viktor grabs my hand and drags me to a side street where no one can see us. He holds me tight and kisses my hair. I worry a bit, he’s clingier than usual. When he doesn’t let go for a while, I pat his head. “Viktor, is everything okay?”

“My Yuuri,” his soft expression has the slightest undercurrent of worry. “Let’s just go back to the dorms and spend a bit more time together?”

He’s definitely clingier than usual. “I thought you wanted me to solve the mystery?”

Normally, I would expect Viktor to cutely pout, but today, he frowns in contemplation. “I do,” he admits, “but, I… I, I feel like,” he sighs in frustration. “No, you’re right, you need to finish the mystery.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Yes,” Viktor says resolutely. “Sorry, I just wanted you all to myself,” he pouts, trying to lighten the mood. 

I weigh his words in my head. I know he’s not telling me the full story, but I trust him.

“Yuuri.”

“Yes?”

“Can you kiss me? Make it really sweet.”

I smile at the request, and kiss him gently. He slowly pins me to the wall and presses himself against me, tongues entwining as they have several times before, pulsing and intense. He clutches my jacket, holding me close. His desperation is overwhelming, and I begin to drown in him. But before I can, he slows down and our mouths separate, breaking a strand of wetness that connects us. We’re both left panting in the alley.

I am confused more than ever.

“Sorry, I didn’t know what came over me,” says Viktor.

I press us together again, and kiss him softly. His initial shock melts into compliance and we enjoy a kiss unclouded by anything except love. I pull back and run my fingers through his dishevelled hair, then wipe his lips with my thumb to make him look somewhat presentable again.

**

The river exudes its explosive power. I trek along the river bank, clad in my boots and Viktor’s borrowed backpack after I lost mine in the sailing accident. Earlier, I stopped by the clinic to retrieve Kikuyu’s journal in case he had a clue on the whereabouts of the secret fishing spot. All I know is that it can store liquor. If I’m lucky today, I’ll see Kikuyu fishing in the secret spot, relaxing with a bottle of alcohol, drinking to his passed friend.

The fishermen did not lie about the journey. The stones are slippery and sit at odd angles. So far, I’ve slipped twice and nearly twisted my ankle when my foot landed the wrong way. I pass the big tree from yesterday. The sun hasn’t even hit noon yet, and I have all afternoon to walk until I reach the marsh. Hopefully, that won’t be the case and I’ll bump into Kikuyu soon enough.

My legs are sore from the uneven terrain. There is a downed tree at the river bend, and I climb upon it to keep myself dry while I eat my lunch. It’s a drab ordeal from the mess hall, a chicken sandwich with a thin piece of lettuce and too much mayo until it’s sloppy. It turns to mush in my mouth and I break up the monotony with a leathery piece of beef jerky, also courtesy of the mess hall. The red lighthouse at the top of the cliff is still blurry with distance. I still have a long way until I reach it, but hopefully it doesn’t come to that.

I wash everything down with a sip from my water bottle, and read through Kikuyu’s journal to comb for any identifying characteristics to give away the secret fishing hole. I suppose, that would be detrimental to its covertness, but I try anyway.

The journal reveals nothing and I continue down. I recruit a piece of driftwood as a walking stick to help stabilize me.

The hours pass, and I see one other person patiently waiting for a tug on their line. We nod to each other in acknowledgement when we pass. The river tapers considerably into a calm, steady stream. I drag the walking stick along the water, but it doesn’t touch the bottom. I am not deceived by the shallow illusion; the water runs deeper than it seems.

My feet and shins ache from the lumpy stones, unaccustomed to the uneven pressure. I rest on a large rock, chewing my last piece of piece of jerky while I let my tight legs unwind. Tonight, I’ll ask Viktor to massage the knots out of my muscles.

I continue on my way, watching for nooks and crannies big enough to store a bottle of booze. I end up sticking my hand into some questionable animal burrows and tree hollows, but fortunately I am unscathed.

The lighthouse looms brighter and closer as the afternoon passes, and there is still no sign of Kikuyu. I should have asked the man I saw a few hours ago if he ever saw Kikuyu, but I missed my chance.

The sky is dimming, and I should turn back to catch the last bus. However, there’s not much more until I clear the final stretch of the river, and it’s warmer now, so I can camp outside under a bush or something. There’s a lighter in Viktor’s backpack, so I should be able to pass the night without freezing to death.

I sigh, I guess I won’t see Viktor tonight after all. I guess I’ll massage the knots out of my own legs.

After not much more walking, I see a tarp-like fabric, half banked, half floating on the water. My heart races in excitement as I jog towards it. It’s the most exciting thing I’ve discovered all day, I hope it will at least make for a good story to tell the other participants when I return.

In my excitement, I step on something hard and accidentally crush it under my boots. I step back and inspect the pieces. There’s a bent glasses frame among the shatter of glass. The pieces break apart when I try to pick them up, but I can tell they are blue and black. A dryness rushes into my mouth, and I suddenly find it very hard to keep my breathing steady.

I take a step closer to the mass that looks less like a tarp and more like…

It’s bobbing around in the water, swollen as a balloon. I swallow a dry lump in my throat, and dig my walking stick under the mass, and flip it over.

I scream.

The walking stick falls into the water from my shaking hands. Unable to look away, I stumble backwards, tripping on the jagged rocks, falling onto a sharp stone stabbing into my back. I stay there, tears blurring my eyes to protect me from what I see in front of me.

The water has left the body bloated and grey, but I recognize that face anywhere… because that is my corpse floating in the river. The legs are bent at odd angles, irreparably broken as if he jumped from a harrowing height. My confusing file from Viktor’s office snaps into place. The stories I’ve heard from the town folk weave together.

Kikuyu is me, and I committed suicide by jumping off the bridge. I have been solving the mystery of my own death.

Painful static passes through my head. 

I drag myself as far away from the river as I possibly can, and deposit myself between the thick roots of a large tree. The energy to get up is drained from me. The fuzziness waxes. I wave my hand in front of my face, and it feels strange.

Footsteps walk up to me, and the person rests a kind hand on my face, then they cradle my head in their arms. They smell familiar. 

“Moderator Nikiforov, let go of the participant,” says a voice. Somehow, I know they’re wearing a blue suit. “He’s phasing and he is now our responsibility.”

“Don’t leave me,” I murmur, clutching onto him. He holds onto me for a moment longer.

“Don’t remove your ring, my love.” 

I nod. He lets me go, and I fall into an endless void.

**

**

**

I seem to have fallen asleep on the bench I normally sit at. The glare of the sun is too much for my sleepy eyes and I use my hand to shield it away. My head is pounding with a terrible headache and my mouth tastes like sand. How long have I been out for?

I stretch my body… and then, as if lightening had struck me, a cruel dread strikes through my heart. I remember it all.

I look out to the sea beyond the river, and remember my family’s ashes scattered across the black waters, and now I must face them every day in this godforsaken beach town. It’s punishingly fitting for someone like me. Everyday, I live with the guilt and loneliness. The sound of my name is whispered by the crash of the waves, and I take a step towards the railing barring me from the water below. 

Nicholai was the only redeeming person in this town. I thought I could make amends for my family through him. An act of kindness for forgiveness, but he turned out to be so much more.

At first, we just shared our time together on a bench, exchanging nothing more than a couple of words. Then it grew into something like kinship when we bonded over a mutual loss of family. For him, he lost his wife and daughter, for me, I lost everyone. He shared his family with me. But his sudden death was the last nail in the coffin for me. He was the only person I had left, and even he abandoned me as well.

I peer over the edge of the bridge. I can’t bear being alone anymore. _Yuuri, Yuuri, Yuuri, Yuuri _the gyres below me chant. I hear my Mother, my Father, Mari, and Nicholai, whispering from the watery depths. 

There is nothing left for me here. There is no one on the bridge, and no one will miss me.

My knuckles are white as they clutch the railing. My feet dangle off the side. It’s a long journey down, but I’ve come far enough. I stare into the stygian waters for what seems like a life time.

The briefest flash of gold startles me out of my daze, like chasing the tail end of a warm dream before it dissolves. I look back to the water, but the longer I stare, the quicker my heart races. The quicker my heart races, the colder the chill frosting my neck. My hands begin to tremble and before I know it, I clamour back behind the safety of the railing.

I don’t know what came over me. How can I be so reckless to even think about jumping off the bridge?

I wipe the thin sheen of sweat from my brow with a trembling hand and crawl back to the stone bench where my bag sits. How could I abandon Briar to fend off the clinic for herself? And why did I spend all that time in medical school if I choose to end it so young? There are so many people who still need my help. And Nicholai’s family had graciously taken me in, how can I forget them?

An urge builds up inside me, and wells up to my chest. I sob into my hands, letting it all out. I have been truly blinded.

I’m glad there is no one else on the bridge to hear me cry. Nicholai always liked to remind me that _tears are the summer showers to the soul _when I caught him crying on our bench. He isn’t here to remind me anymore, so I remind myself.

The warmth of the sunlight on my skin feels refreshing as a sea breeze combs through the deep gorge. Wispy clouds streak through the sky, refracting the setting sun in burning colours. I can only sit and admire the view.

“Katsudon?”

I quickly compose myself, making sure all the tears have dried from my face.

Yuri sits down next to me. “Are you coming to the planning session? You wanna tag along?”

“Now?” I ask.

“Please, come with me,” he pleads. “All my relatives are flying in, and I hate making small talk with them. I’d rather hang out with you.”

We walk together to his home. Unfamiliar cars are parked outside on the street and several pairs of shoes wait outside the door.

“_Mama_, I’m back. I brought the other Yuuri.”

I slip my feet into my pair of dark blue slippers. The normally spacious house for a family of four—now three—is packed and brimming with people. The air is stuffy, mixed with the smells of cigarettes and the heat of bodies. I take off my coat and look for a free hanger in the closet, but I give up and just push my coat onto a shelf like so many others have done.

When I ask Yuri for his coat, I find him accosted by his relatives. Several of them pat his back gruffly, and the women give him kisses on the cheek which he tries to fight off. They coo over how much he has grown during his studies in London. 

I take the coat from Yuri’s hand to cram into a shelf, but he introduces me to some of his family with a devilish smile, then I am the one overwhelmed with handshakes. Although, the women don’t kiss me on the cheek, settling for a polite handshake instead.

The conversations start off innocent enough, then the women start throwing me lines of Russian, caught between simpering mouths and subtle glances at my lips. Yuri says something to change the subject, then drags me away when they start teasing him about finally making a decent friend. They erupt into laughter behind us.

In the kitchen, there are several pots of food, all at various stages of cooking. The sink is overflowing with dishes and kitchen utensils. Nina is chopping some green herb, it smells like mint. Yuri instantly jumps in to check on all the food.

“Yurochka!” she says to Yuri. She hugs him. “And Yura, I missed your face,” she kisses me on the cheek and pinches my chin like she would a baby.

“Oi! Is he your son, or am I your son?” Yuri pipes from behind her.

“You’re both my sons!” her laugh rings out through the kitchen. “Now, I need five extra hands to finish this meal and sour cream! Yurochka Did you bring it like I told you to?”

“Yup.” He hands her a small round tub.

“Did you greet all your relatives? Including Aunt Alisa?”

Yuri groans and leaves the kitchen where I see him strike up a conversation with a very frail older woman.

I roll up my sleeves and help with the food. Nina says that I should socialize with the rest of the family, or help Erik air out the guest bedding, but I insist with a smile.

Before long, Yuri is back in the kitchen, helping me skim the scummy layer from the beef stock. We make quick work of the food. My stomach is grumbling from hunger. Nina shoos us upstairs to clean up before dinner.

The doors to all the rooms are open with the windows propped wide. There are multiple pieces of bedding in every room. I even see a sleeping bag or two in Nina’s office. This town’s dingy motel is too small to accommodate so many people at once, so I guess this is how most people improvise when they have guests.

I splash some water on my face and run some through my hair to get rid of the smells of cooking. My white button up is formal enough. Even though I stopped showing up to work for a few weeks, I never stopped dressing like it. A habit, I suppose.

Dinner is held in the formal dining room. I’ve never seen Nicholai’s family use it ever since my first invitation to the Plisetsky home many months ago. The wooden dining table is extended by a fold-out table to accommodate all the extra guests.

Erik makes a toast to his deceased father, Nicholai, then Nina says a few words of appreciation before we eat. I forgot how I love having dinner at the Plisetsky home. I often don’t cook elaborate meals for myself, and I believe that I can really taste it when someone cooks with love. Or maybe it’s because I’m not very handy in the kitchen. At the third course, Nina offers me another bowl of soup, which I politely decline.

When the meal ends, Nina thanks everyone for volunteering their time to help her prepare for the funeral. She pulls out her laptop and begins to attach people to roles.

“Yura, you’re still okay with delivering a eulogy for Nicholai?” she asks me.

I nod my head.

“And Yurochka, you’re fine with it too?”

“Of course, I want to give a eulogy,” he says.

She rattles off a list of duties: liquidation of assets, obtaining deposition certificates, writing obituaries, collecting all of Nicholai’s favourite poems. The length of the list is mesmerizing and familiar. After all, I was the one who provided her with the same list I compiled when I arranged the funeral for my family.

“Does anyone not have a role?”

“I don’t.”

The voice came from the far end of the table. A man with silver hair has his hand up.

“Vitya, I didn’t see you squirreled away in the corner,” she squints at her laptop. “How about you handle the floral arrangements?”

After the meeting, the table is cleared, and everyone splits up into their small clusters again. Nina asks Yuri and I to brew coffee for the guests. I search the cupboards for teacups, and to my surprise, they have several in excess.

Erik and I approach each group and offer them coffee, then administer the sugar and cream from tiny ceramic pots.

I have one cup of coffee left before I need to return to the kitchen to replenish my supply. I approach the man from earlier, the one tasked with the floral arrangements. He sits alone, working on his laptop.

“Would you like coffee?” I ask him.

He looks up at me and does a double take, then his fingers stop typing. His eyes are the same colour of the sea—if it were sad. I wonder if he is happy, sitting in this crowded living room, meeting under these horrible circumstances.

“Yes,” he says, smiling widely. “I take mine with a lot of sugar and cream.”

I give him my last cup and use the dainty tongs to drop sugar cubes into the coffee, then top it off with cream. Meanwhile, his stare is fixed on the ring I wear on my hand. The glare off the ring glints and shines brightly. I can’t remember when I acquired it. Briar probably slipped it on when I was napping in my office as a practical joke.

Before I walk away, he speaks up again. “I don’t think we’ve met,” he says, getting up to extend a hand to me. “I’m Viktor, Yuri’s cousin. His father and my mother were siblings.”

I quickly shake his hand. “I’m Yuuri, but with a long _u, _I am Nicholai’s friend.”

Yuri pulls a pot of coffee off the stove when I return to the kitchen. I load up on more coffee and sugar, considering the last person asked for nearly half the bowl. Erik and I serve the rest of the coffee before collecting in the kitchen to have a cup ourselves.

“Yurochka, did you help Vitya with his things to your bedroom?” Erik asks.

“I’m too old to share a room with Viktor, and I thought my room was off limits.” He frowns, then takes a sip of his black coffee.

“Come on, didn’t you used to idolize him when you were young?” Erik says, nudging Yuri. “And we’re really running out of space. I didn’t realize your cousin Milia brought her girlfriend with her, and your aunts are already stuffed in your mother’s study. You could always be stuck with Aunt Alisa.”

Yuri looks to me, and then back to his father, “you’re so embarrassing,” he mutters. Yuri turns red and leaves the kitchen.

Erik and I have a nice conversation about politics before Nina enters the kitchen. She asks if I want a drive home, which I decline. I hug both of them before I leave. I don’t see Yuri again, but I don’t think he’ll mind.

I catch the night bus that takes me back to town. I pat myself for keys, hoping I didn’t forget them at the Plisetsky’s. I breathe a sigh of relief when I find them in a coat pocket, but I accidentally drop them into the rosebushes in front of my house. I get down on all fours, and bear through the thorns, until the keys are in my hand again, then I let myself in.

**

I wake up to my mess of a bedroom on a bright Saturday morning.

The rest of the house is not much better. How could I let things get so bad?

The fridge is nearly empty, so I eat the hodgepodge of leftovers. A bit of cheese on stale crackers, and a cup of tea. I suppose this is enough until I can go out for groceries again.

I blast some music on the sound system, and get to work. I drown the dishes in the sink with piping hot water and douse it in soap. My clothes fly into the washer and I open the large French doors to air out the stale smell of my home. I collect all the scattered textbooks lying on my coffee table and kitchen counter, then return them to my study—which is a completely different beast. I straighten and separate the stacks of papers, a mix of trauma and otology articles that I have no memory of reading.

I break out the vacuum and steam clean the floors until they are glossy and shining with its original hardwood finish. I drag my mattress and blankets, rugs and pillows, and anything soft to the patio, string them up, then pummel them with a tennis racket. Each swing earns me a satisfying puff of dust that dissipates into the cleansing sea air. 

I get on my hands and knees and soap up all the bathrooms until the porcelain is painfully white. Lastly, I make my bed before collapsing into it. The smell of fresh laundry wafts around me. I pant with exhaustion, but oddly, I’ve never felt as alive as I do now. It feels nice to have a clean reset.

I take a quick shower and walk to the clinic to drop off books and articles which migrated to my home. The clinic remains as I left it. Briar normally keeps it clean, but it doesn’t seem like she has been in for a while. I leave a stack of bills on the front desk and make a call to Briar’s phone number. She doesn’t pick up. I try her emergency contact, Mrs. Mathilda.

A man named Scott answers my call. He tells me that Mrs. Mathilda passed away last week. I ask him about Briar, and he tells me that she will be leaving town with him to go to London and she won’t be able to work for me anymore, officially resigning on her behalf.

I hang up, wondering where I will find another secretary. I guess I can always do it myself. I don’t have many patients anyway. I clean up my office, and separate the otology journals from the trauma journals.

My hand lingers. I miss it, working in the emergency room. The exhilaration and thrill of saving people, compared to… doing routine ear check-ups and hearing tests.

I stack the trauma journals away in a cabinet and air out the rest of my office. All the office lights are closed, so I rely on only the bright sunlight slitting through the blinds. I can hear the lap of the sea on the shore through an open window somewhere.

My phone rings, Yuri invites me to dinner again, which I gladly accept. He says that the motel is finally able to free up some rooms, so it won’t be so packed this time.

I spend the rest of my afternoon catching up on paperwork and bills until it’s time to leave. I pick around the wine selection at the liquor store while I wait for the bus.

Yuri opens the door for me, and I wear my usual blue slippers. I give Erik the wine and ask if there is anything I can do to help, but he promptly kicks me out of the kitchen.

I find Nina sitting in the living room, talking to who I believe is Aunt Alisa. I greet both of them and Nina nearly chokes out her tea when Aunt Alisa leans in to enthusiastically dab three wet kisses to my cheek. I can understand why Yuri doesn’t like saying hello to her.

I woodenly excuse myself and duck into the powder room to splash my face with water, and wipe down with tissue paper. I hang out in the dining room, away from the few people who remain at the house. I read a book from the shelves to pass the time. It’s a technical book about oceanography, it must belong to Nina.

“Is your wife Russian?”

I look up to find Viktor standing beside me. He’s pointing at the gold ring on my finger.

For some reason, I cover my ring. “No, I don’t have a wife,” I say, confused.

He raises an eyebrow. “Oh, sorry. I shouldn’t assume. So, your husband is Russian? He’s very lucky to have you. It’s a shame I missed my chance with you,” a mischievous smile dances on his lips.

I feel my face growing hot. I nearly drop the book I am holding when I try to set it down on the table. I take a closer look at my ring. Cyrillic is engraved around the band. “U-um. No, I think I should clarify. I’m not married. This is not a wedding band. It’s a good luck charm.”

“May I see it?” he asks, reaching for my hand and inspecting the ring on all sides. “Do you know what it says?”

I shake my head.

“ ‘Stay close to me’,” he says with a small smile. “A very romantic sentiment. It looks almost identical to my parents’ wedding ring—even the same inscription, except I can’t find my mother’s ring anywhere. I seem to have misplaced it.”

He lets go of my hand. “I’m surprised whoever gave you the ring told you it was a good luck charm. It looks too expensive for a something you give to a friend.”

I laugh. “I don’t even know why I wear it.”

Yuri’s head pokes out from doorway, “Viktor, how can you be so shameless? Picking up men during the mourning period,” he sneers.

Viktor doesn’t say anything and simply smiles politely at Yuri, which makes Yuri stick his tongue at him.

“When you’re done harassing my friend, come to the kitchen for dinner.” Yuri’s voice disappears down the hall.

I replace the book back on the shelf and walk out of the dining room. Everyone is already seated and in the kitchen. There is only Aunt Alisa, Viktor, and another relative who remains with the Plisetsky’s.

Over dinner, while everyone else is lost in their own conversation, Yuri quietly updates me on all the strange quirks of his relatives. According to Yuri, Uncle Noah stores a flask in his bionic arm, Aunt Alisa used to be a Lucidex engineer at the turn of the second millennium before consciousness engineering made it big, and apparently, Viktor has been asking about me since last night and wouldn’t let him sleep.

Yuri shoots Viktor another dirty look, but he doesn’t notice. Viktor is quite occupied with stories about Uncle Noah’s bionic arm.

“So, I have a proposition for you,” Yuri says. His dark eyebags become more noticeable when he’s not scowling. “Can you do me a huge favour and put up with him for a night? I know you have a guest bedroom, and I _really_ need to sleep, and he _really_ likes you. It’s _so_ annoying.”

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “He thought I was married and he still tried to talk to me, um, in _that_ way. It doesn’t look very good for his character.”

Yuri snorts, “No! I told him that no woman or man touched you since the beginning of time.”

“Uh, well, technic--”

“But he wanted to confirm you really weren’t married in case he thought I was shitting him when I told him last night. He squeeled so much. _Oh Yuuri is such Eros, _or, uh, what did he say?”

I looked across the table, where I saw Viktor trying to keep a straight face while blushing at the divulgement of his comments last night.

“Oh ya, _his thighs can crush watermelons._” Yuri re-enacts Viktor’s fawning in a whiny voice and a hand draped over his forehead. He pauses when something catches his eye in the light, “when did you start wearing that ring?”

I shrug.

“Ahem, Yurochka, may I steal Yura—I mean, Yuuri for a moment?” Viktor asks. “Actually, can you switch spots with me? My back is so sore because I am _so old_, and your chair has um, cushioning. If you switch places, you’ll get to hear all about your Uncle Noah’s many interesting stories about the oil rig.”

Yuri crosses his arms and stays in his seat.

“Yurochka,” says Nina, “switch with your cousin.”

They switch, and Uncle Noah begins to barrage Yuri with a rapid fire of tall tales, too tall to believe.

Viktor plops down on the plush chair. “So, we meet again,” he casually says, with his head propped on his hand. I can hear Yuri making retching sounds from across the table.

“Yurochka, mind your manners,” Erik says, breaking out of what seems to be a serious conversation with Nina and Aunt Alisa. 

“Yuri tells me that you’re a medical doctor?” says Viktor.

“Yup. I have a hearing clinic in town. I moved here from Japan to take a break from trauma surgery. It got to me after a while, so here I am.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” says Viktor. He holds my hand under the table. I don’t think he realizes that he’s rubbing my ring.

“What do you do for a living?” I ask, cramming another spoonful of potato salad into my mouth.

“Well, I work as a psychologist at a consciousness manipulation company. They don’t like it when I say ‘manipulation,’ because it has a negative connotation, but it’s essentially that. Since consciousness suspension technology is still in its infancy, the project I’m working on is sorta hush-hush.” Viktor darts his eyes around the room. “But I’ll tell you all about it if you want.” He winks at me and moves his chair a bit closer. He smells like nice soap which reminds me of the ocean. “But enough about that, so what about you? Do you have a partner?” He asks, inching closer to the edge of his chair. 

The question catches me off-guard, “n-no!”

“Any ex-partners?”

“N-no comment!” I hold my hands up to keep him at a distance, but he catches on and doesn’t come any closer. “Um, tell me about your job. It sounds interesting.”

He leans back in surprise, “you actually want to hear about it?” he says flatly.

I nod. Anything to buy me some breathing space. 

He shrugs, “I’m working on a mental health project that uses consciousness suspension technology to capture the minds of people who have recently committed suicide and gives them a second chance at life. The therapy program, which I’m working on, gives patients an outside perspective on their life by inserting their consciousness into a living simulation, and allows them to understand how much they mean to other people.”

A strawberry _zapekanka_ and two spoons are placed in front of me. I nod to prompt him to continue.

“When they’re done exploring all that they mean to people, they’ll eventually figure out that they’re dead.”

His dessert spoon plunges into my _zapekanka _and he takes the spoonful into his mouth, moaning with pleasure at the taste. While I have to admit that Erik’s _zapekanka_ is good, it’s not_ that_ good.

“My goodness, this is so amazing,” Viktor moans after taking another spoonful. “Do you like sweet things? What’s your favourite dessert? This is amazing, you should try some.” He tries to feed me _zapekanka_ with his spoon, which I avoid. 

“Desserts are okay, but what happens after people realize they’ve died?”

He places the spoon back on the plate, “at that point, their consciousness begins to ‘phase’ which makes the person want to ‘wake up’ because it’s a paradox. So, we facilitate the resolution of the paradox by injecting them back to the time just before the critical incident, or in layman’s terms, before they commit suicide. It’s supposed to seem like a dream. If the therapy is successful, the patient will be able to see the value of their life and resist the urge, and lives again, theoretically. If not, then the data is lost. At that point, we can’t retrieve it a second time. Also, if a person dies in therapy, their information is also irretrievable. Sorta like freezing and refreezing meat. Each time you do it, it’s less meat-like and more um, sludge-like.”

I would have thought Viktor is spouting nonsense, except I’ve heard about this new technology from some of my old colleagues in Japan. I haven’t been in touch with them for a while, but I didn’t realize how quickly it has developed.

“It’s really important that people don’t realize they’re dead until they’re ready to face the critical incident, or else we’re sending them to the slaughter. Of course, sometimes people aren’t successful, and it’s difficult. The patients we treat often have intractable depression, so we wipe their memory before they begin the program. Being disconnected from their old memories will help give them a fresh start without a lot of the emotional baggage. We try the best we can, given the time line.” 

“So can you hold people indefinitely?” I ask Viktor.

“Sorry, what was that?” he asks. “Come closer, I can’t hear you over the commotion happening in the living room.”

I grab my chair and press it until it is flush against Viktor’s. He leans a bit closer and I ask my question again, a little louder this time. “So can you hold people indefinitely?” I ask him, then look up at his face to see if he understood. 

He rests his hand on my shoulder, “no, most people’s consciousness data is stable for two months, and then they degrade exponentially,” he says into my ear.

“Where is the space component to all this? Is it like _The Matrix_ where you enter a virtual space and…?” the words don’t come out. I haven’t even seen _The Matrix_, so I don’t know why I’m making this reference.

Viktor laughs and now his hand rests on my thigh. “Well, we have a huge facility and we project people and memories into the space. There’s a bit of mechanical magic and hocus-pocus to make everything realistic, but yes, this occurs in a 3D space. Surprisingly, a person’s consciousness feels unbelievably realistic…” There’s a slight squeeze on my thigh. “But we still don’t know why it works, we just know that it does.”

I frown in concentration, trying to process all the information Viktor is unloading onto me. This sounds oddly familiar.

“I’m boring you, aren’t I?” asks Viktor when he notices that I’m not replying. 

“No, I find this all very interesting,” I reassure him. “Tell me about what happens when they return to their time line after therapy.”

“We don’t know too much, about that either. We can only track whether or not their consciousness has been terminated. We hope that if people do survive, they will return to their previous time lines for a second shot at life, just like the theory suggests.”

“Aren’t you worried about messing up the space-time continuum if you send people back in time?”

Viktor smiles at me and shrugs. “Nope, not really. I’m not too knowledgeable about this myself. This is usually handled by another department. We call them the Blue Suits, but from what I understand time is pretty flexible.”

“Katsudon, do you want a ride home?”

I blink up at Yuri standing on the other side of the kitchen table. Everything has already been cleared away, including my strawberry _zapekanka _which I never got a chance to eat, which I learned Yuri poached from me and ate for himself when I was busy talking to Viktor. The two other guests have retired to their rooms. No one else is in the kitchen except us.

“Where’s Nina?” I ask him.

“She went to sleep.”

I feel the embarrassment that comes with imposing on my hosts. I blush even harder when I realize just how close Viktor and I are talking, or how he has his arm slung around my shoulder, holding my hand in his. I hurry to the door to collect my things and accept Yuri’s offer to drive me home.

I say goodbye to Viktor. I wonder how I manage to get myself into this mess and I wait for Yuri to leave the house, but he continues to stand by the front door, twirling the car keys around his finger. 

“Are you forgetting something?” asks Yuri, aggressively jutting a thumb at Viktor. He looks at Yuri in confusion, having no idea what we’re talking about. 

Kill me with a rusty knife.

I clear my throat. “Um, Viktor, I have a guest bedroom at my place,” I say to him with my eyes focused on the floor, ready to burn a hole into the nice carpet by the door entrance, “would you like to come with me, tonight?” I choke on the last word.

“Oh, Yuuri. I would _love to come._ That’s so bold of you to offer! Let me get my things from Yurochka’s room.”

When Viktor completely disappears upstairs, I groan into my hands. “What have you done?”

“Oh please,” Yuri scoffs. “You were all over each other during dinner. My Mom says that if you marry him, we would be related by marriage, and my Dad will throw in all the piroshkies you can eat.”

I help Viktor load his things into the car. I sit in the backseat, offering Viktor the front, but he also rides in the back with me. He is the only person I have met who would voluntarily sit in the middle seat when all the other seats are available.

The ride into town is spent listening to songs on the radio of Yuri’s choice. The roof is down, letting the wind ruffle through my hair. For a moment, I strongly consider buying a car to avoid listening to his strange music, and also to decrease my reliance on the goodwill of Nina and Erik.

The moonlight sets upon Viktor face, casting his eyes in an otherworldly gleam as he watches me, touching his hand against mine. I look away and up. The sky has cleared out, and I can’t remember the last time I saw stars.

“Are you okay?” Viktor whispers, his lips grazing the shell of my ear. I can’t completely attribute the shiver that runs through my body to the night air. 

“I’m fine,” I say to him.

The house is quiet and dark, like always, except there is the citrus scent of furniture polish from this afternoon’s cleaning frenzy. I show Viktor to the spare bedroom and unroll the unused bedding from the packaging. I never had a guest, until tonight.

“Am I _actually_ sleeping in the guest bedroom?” he asks me.

I puzzle at the question. “Where else would you sleep?”

I check the en-suite bathroom for toiletries, and I tell him to help himself to what ever is in the fridge, which is precisely a small block of cheese and some crackers in the cabinet.

I go to my own room and lock the door out of habit. I shower, and flop onto my comfy bed. The gauzy curtains billow behind the open balcony door. It’s almost winter, but by the sea, it’s not so bad.

**

We stand under the black canopy of the flower shop while we wait for the owner to find the right key to open the door. It’s a miserable and drizzly morning, and Viktor asked me to show him around town, starting with the flower shop. He’s surprisingly chipper for someone who didn’t catch much sleep last night.

The store is humid and filled with exotic looking flowers with equally exotic names. Viktor is speaking to the florist to figure out the details of the funeral arrangements. Meanwhile, I am free to look around, feeling all the glossy petals. There’s a particularly pretty arrangement of flowers, which I think will serve as a nice gift for Yuri’s parents next time I visit.

The florist wraps the gift in pastel paper, “these for the wife?” she smirks.

“They’re for my good friends,” I correct her.

We leave the shop and eat an early lunch at a café. Viktor holds me tight so we can both fit under the navy umbrella. I should have brought another one, but he insisted that we can share. I order a sandwich and tea. Viktor orders a quiche and a cup of coffee.

I watch Viktor sip from his cup.

“Don’t you take your coffee with a lot of sugar and cream?” I ask him.

He grins at me. “I only asked for a lot of sugar to make you stay for a few seconds longer. I didn’t even drink the coffee that night, it would have worsened my jetlag.” His eyes disappear behind the cup when he takes another sip of coffee.

A blush spreads on my face. No one has ever admitted their feelings to me so openly. Well, except for Briar, and that intern when I was in Japan, and my classmate from medical school, but the point is, I am caught off guard about this fact he reveals to me.

I let out a nervous laugh.

“So Yuuri, tell me, who gave you the ring? Do you remember? It’s clear that they obviously like you, a lot.” Viktor leans closer to me and tucks some stray hair behind my ear, “a ring stakes a claim on someone, it keeps others away, like the florist who ogled the way you touched the flowers.”

“Viktor…” I warn, looking around to see if anyone overheard the conversation. Somehow, his hand is on my hand again for the third time today. I lean back into my chair, taking my jasmine tea with me. “I told you, I can’t remember who gave me the ring.” I watch people walk by in the rainy weather, umbrellas bobbing along in a river of colours. “I don’t understand why you’re so persistent about this.”

He closes his eyes and takes a breath to collect his thoughts. “You’re right, I don’t know why I’m being so persistent about the ring.” He looks at me with a smile that doesn’t fit his usual cheerful demeanour. “I won’t bring it up again.”

We pay for our food, then leave the café. I show him around the main strip of town in all its drizzly glory. I can’t remember how many times I say _It’ll look better when it’s sunny. _I offer to hold the umbrella when I see the side of his wool coat dampen with rain, but he insists.

When the tour is done, we go to the only grocery store in the town. Viktor shops for two people. I tell him that I’m not much of a chef, but he says that he doesn’t mind cooking for two. It slowly sinks into me that he’s planning to stay at my house for more than just a night when he pays for the food.

**

One day over breakfast, Viktor slides a sheet of paper to me. I push up my glasses to read it. It’s his resume.

“I’m applying to be your secretary,” he says just before taking a bite of honeydew.

I slide it back to him. “You’re overqualified.”

“So does this mean you’ll take me?” he asks.

“No.”

“Oh, come on Yuuri,” he whines. “I’m on bereavement leave from my day job, I helped Nina and Erik as much as I can, and I have nothing to do all day. I’ve been living in your guest bedroom for a week now. It’s the least I can do to repay you.”

The offer is tempting. Since I reopened my clinic, I underestimated how much time the paperwork eats up. I posted an ad for a secretary in the newspaper, but all the people I interviewed don’t seem to have the same aptitude as Briar.

“Uh, okay, fine,” I say, and I hope I don’t regret it. 

**

Working with Viktor isn’t as unwieldy as I thought it would be. My patients love him. They tell him to be careful because I seduced my previous secretary and got her pregnant. He tells me that he doesn’t believe it, but I explain myself, just in case.

He’s cheerful and manages to complete all the paperwork thrown his way. We eat lunch together everyday, and when the weather is nice, we eat at the beach instead of in my office. Sometimes, I see him glance sadly at the place where the ring used to sit on my finger. I removed it, and it now it collects dust in my bathroom cabinet, but true to his word, he doesn’t bring it up ever again. 

I am learning how to cook from him. When we’re not invited for dinner at the Plisetsky’s, we stay in and try new recipes. After dinner, we go down to the rocky beach and I teach him the basics of sailing. In the glow of the sunset, we sail the calm waters to the small islands dotted beyond the beach. Viktor does silly things like etching out both our initials into rocks like a schoolkid. After drawing a heart around the initials, I threaten to maroon him and he jumps back into the sailboat, hugging me tightly to him, then we sail off again. 

Since meeting Nicholai, I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy.

And I let him get away with things. The hand holding, the hugging, the lingering touches on my back, and small kisses on my cheek when no one is looking. One night after I dozed off watching a movie we rented, I felt him brush my hair aside and kiss me gently on my forehead. I sometimes think about his touch in the middle of the day when I’m lost in thought. He plays this off as whimsical, but I can tell there is a method to his madness. He presses his way into my space…and it works. I don’t protest anymore, except when he tries to kiss me on the mouth in front of other people. He tries to pass it off as a traditional Russian greeting between men. To my chagrin, Erik confirms this to be true, but these customs died over a century ago.

“He probably just wants to kiss you,” Erik casually explains with his nose still in a newspaper. But despite this, I find that I reach for Viktor’s hand under the table during dinners, even after I scold him.

It’s easy for me to get lost in Viktor, but I restrain myself from becoming too attached. He’s too easy to love and adore. He feels like a familiar type of love like a warm bath on a cold day. I savour our time together while I have him. He will be gone after the funeral, and so will I.

The clinic’s lease agreement will expire next month, and I don’t plan to renew it. This town served as a fair break, but my hands itch to return to trauma surgery. The waves still remind me of my family’s ashes scattered in the sea, but it doesn’t hurt as much anymore. And maybe one day, I can learn to love the sea again.

The day of the funeral is a blessed storm after days of suffocating humidity. Everyone held a stiff upper lip, but when it rains, it pours. I deliver my eulogy after Yuri’s and comfort Erik when I find him crying in the washroom after the service.

When we return home that night, Viktor reminds me to renew the clinic lease.

“I’m not going to renew it,” I say on my way up the stairs. 

“What?” he follows me to my room. “What do you mean? Are you leaving?”

“Yea,” I say over my shoulder, “staying in this town was temporary, I think I might move back to Japan or the States, or something.” I loosen the tie he picked out for me and place it in my wardrobe drawer. “Nicholai was the only person keeping me here. You’ll be gone after the funeral and Yuri will go back to school in London. Nina and Erik will have each other, so everything is square to leave.”

His hand touches my arm. He hovers too close to my face and I wonder if he’ll try to kiss me again. “I thought I would have more time with you,” he says, looking lost for words. “Come back to St. Petersburg with me,” he says quietly, watching for my reaction. 

I’ve spent the past weeks wondering what I mean to him, and also, what he means to me. I didn’t think our time together was anything beyond a nice memento to call upon when he was old and withered. But his words promise a life time of memories with him.

The air grows heavier, transforming what I thought to be a light conversation into something else.

There is a flash of sorrow in his eyes before it softens. Viktor takes a step closer to me. He slides the hanger from my fingers, setting it elsewhere.

He holds my hand in his, and brings my palm to his cheek. His eyes close in relief at my touch as he guides my hand over his warm neck and down his chest where his heart beats wildly, betraying his calm exterior. 

My gaze rises to match his. The gradual flush on his face erodes away the calmness. We stay like this for a moment, standing between the open panels of my wardrobe. He presses closer until I can feel the heat off his face, then he kisses me gently. Our lips barely make a sound when they slide together. 

And before it begins, it is already over. He utters a brief apology before he leaves my room. 

I stand there dumbly with heat burning on my face. This wasn’t how I expected this to go. Without an audience, his bravado and confidence had deserted him. And now, he deserted me. My room feels too big without him.

The door to his room is closed, but I enter anyway. He’s slumped over the edge of the bed with his face buried in his hands. His head shoots up when the door creaks. “Oh, um, Yuuri. Sorry.” He hesitates. “I think I need some time alone,” he says, quickly wiping away tears from his cheeks.

I sit beside him, leaving a breath of space between us. I observe the wetness on his face. This all seems familiar somehow. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I’ve hurt you again.”

The apology takes him by surprise. There’s a weak smile on his lips, but before he can say anything else, I kiss him with everything I’m worth, hoping it is enough. His arms wrap around me and he opens up, meeting me halfway.

“I’ll go to St Petersburg,” I tell him, holding him tight. “So, stay close to me.”

He smiles back at me and I finally know the colour of the joyous sea.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again, 
> 
> Wow! Well, that's it from me! I hoped you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. 
> 
> This is the first fic I've bothered to edit and post. I'm still learning how to ritght stories gud and develope charkters, so if you have any constructive criticism, I am all ears.
> 
> In the next day or two, I will post the short epilogue and some facts about the world of this story.


	4. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey readers, 
> 
> I don't know if you know anything about gambling, but always play the side bets. 
> 
> (I'm just joking. Don't play your side bets unless you like losing money.)

_One year later - St. Petersburg. Company holiday party. _

“This is my fiancé, Yuuri,” says Viktor introducing them. “Chris is a co-worker, and Yakov is my supervisor.”

They exchange polite handshakes, making small talk. Yuuri reveals that he is a surgeon at the Metropolitan Hospital and he adopted a dog with Viktor. Their wedding is in May, and they’re both invited.

“So, how’d you meet Vitya,” asks Chris, grinning at Yakov with a knowing look.

Yuuri palms the back of his neck, the engraved gold ring on his finger glints in the light. “At a funeral, actually,” he chuckles. “Pretty morbid right?”

Chris smirks as he chews the olive from his martini. “Hah! Really? A funeral?” asks Chris. “Are you sure?”

Viktor’s ears instantly perk up, and takes Yuuri by the hand, tugging him away, “okay, my love, how about we meet the others?” says Viktor, before turning back to shoot them death glares over his shoulder.

“Oh my stars, he actually did it,” grumbles Yakov.

“The bet’s mine. Pay up,” Chris says with a beaming smile. 

Yakov grunts as he slaps out a crisp bill onto Chris’ outstretched palm. That was the last time he made bets against love.


	5. True Factz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey reader,
> 
> Here are some facts and planning tidbits that I integrated into the story. They're not terribly interesting, but I thought some of you might find it interesting since I love reading the background planning stuff.

_Aurist Kikuyu_ is an anagram for _Yuuri Katsuki_. I didn’t intend for Yuuri to be a doctor, but since the anagram suggested otherwise, he’s a doctor!

The names _Clementine _and _Yuko_ have similar meanings: gentleness. 

_Alex_ and _Jesse _are both unisex names, suggesting the non-cis gender nature of Alex.

_Briar _means prickly shrub, perfect since she originally hails from the forest, and I intended her character to be somewhat selfish and difficult. 

_Mathilda_ means strength (in battle). I want the tiny granny to be deceptively strong.

I was too lazy to search for a name that meant loyal, but I liked the name _Scott _because it sounded like a name a lumberjack might have.

_Akila_ means wisdom, which is needed in abundance to be a doctor.

The boat which Yuuri is on at the very beginning of the story is a holding place for people who have died.

The furniture in Yuuri’s dormitory room is meant to be suicide proof. Doors don’t lock, there are no horizontal bars in the closet (to hang from), the mirror is plastic to prevent it from shattering. The cutlery isn’t sharp to prevent self-inflicted injuries.

Yuuri assumes the town is surrounded by an ocean because it is an artificial body of water filled with tap water. In the real world, the body of water is a sea which contains salt.

The compass doesn’t work and the tide doesn’t turn because it is an isolated and artificial facility.

Yuuri never feels the warmth of the sunlight because it’s artificial lighting. This is similar to the way we don’t feel warmth from lightbulbs when we sit in a room.

The weather is always cloudy to hide the wiring and machinery in the ceiling used to mimic weather.

When Yuuri set off to the ocean, the weather is always extremely stormy to deter anyone from leaving the island and into unauthorized spaces. When he returned, management already knew he would be back so they toned down the storm to make it easier for him to return without drowning.

In the ‘fake’ world, the memory of the participants are blank because it helps them move ahead and tackle their problems more objectively. A lot of mental illness patterns stem from memory and habits we have engrained over time. Without the burden of memory, it’s easier to see things from an objective stand point. 

Yuuri is more inhibited in the real world because he has more emotional baggage to process, and he needs to deal with the death of a friend. This makes him less receptive to Viktor’s romantic advances. 

On the other hand, Viktor is less inhibited in the real world because he is not constrained by the conduct rules of his workplace (i.e., do not have romantic relations with patients). Viktor being Viktor, he broke the rules anyway.

Yuuri lost his memory when his consciousness returned to the real world, because changing bodies will wipe your memory, however some shadows of memory remain. While Viktor’s memory is collapsed across time (i.e., if he experienced something in the future, he will know about it in the present. This is done to keep the timeline straight.), because he is still inhabiting the same body.

Viktor intended the ring to help him reconnect with Yuuri after his timeline transfer, because he knows he will comment on the ring if he sees it on someone else. Although Viktor doesn’t know how memories behave after a transfer, he doesn’t leave out the possibility that he might also lose his memory of Yuuri. His plan does work, because Yuuri has completely lost his memory of the ring and Viktor uses the ring to start a conversation.

The villagers in the town are not real. They are NPC-like projections. The only real people in the town are the Moderators and the People in Blue Suits. The participants are the consciousness of real people, but they lack bodies of their own so they are projected into simulacrums of their bodies. 

If you can’t tell, this story takes place in the near future.


End file.
